Jack Straw: Apparently that is not the case.
	Let me deal with the serious point that the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) raised, which is about the treatment of mentally ill offenders. The chief inspector's report acknowledges the considerable progress we have made in the treatment of mentally ill offenders. We are transferring many more from prisons to more appropriate facilities in the national health service, and since 2003 the NHS has been responsible for health care inside prisons. However, I accept, as I think the whole House does, that we must do more, and we are doing more. In addition, my noble Friend Lord Bradley is currently conducting a major review to see what further imaginative steps we can take to achieve the end that we all want, which is that prison should deal with serious and persistent offenders who do not have serious mental health problems; those who do are better dealt with elsewhere.

David Hanson: From recollection, I should say that I have written to the hon. Gentleman in the past day or so about the scheme that might operate in North Cornwall constituency. I shall certainly consider his objections. However, the issue remains: if, when ClearSprings proposes a property, the police or the local council object to it being used for such a purpose, it will be withdrawn from the potential use. If North Cornwall district council objects, we will certainly revisit the scheme and examine the hon. Gentleman's concerns.

David Hanson: The hon. Gentleman will know—I am sure he does—that sex offenders subject to notification requirements under the Sex Offenders Act 1997, violence and sex offenders currently serving an extended sentence, prisoners who fail to comply with curfew orders, fine defaulters, foreign national prisoners, prisoners charged with homicide, causing explosions, possession of offensive weapons, possession of firearms, cruelty to children or racially aggravated offences, among others, are not entitled to home detention curfew. Prisoners that are on such curfew or are on remand in the community rather than taking up valuable prison places are thus prisoners who have committed lower categories of offences. I hope that that will reassure the hon. Gentleman.

Madeleine Moon: At 40 per cent. less cost, we community sentencing can deal with four times the number of people who are in prison. We know that community sentencing is 14 per cent. more successful in terms of the reoffending rate. Should we not be looking at extending community sentencing, rather than increasing prison places?

Jennifer Willott: Given the evidence that a fundamental part of rehabilitation is the education and training opportunities that prisoners receive in prison, and given that there are long waiting lists for those courses and that the increased use of early release makes it much harder for prisoners to complete the courses before they leave, what is the Department doing to ensure that prisoners who are released early are able to continue with the education and training they undertake in prison, to enable them to rehabilitate successfully afterwards?

Jack Straw: The hon. Gentleman is right that I have a very real interest in that. There are many spirited conversations between my officials and those at the Home Office, and between the Home Secretary and myself, about ensuring that time-sentenced foreign national prisoners are removed from the country as quickly as possible by deportation or administrative means. That said, it happens that since they then become the responsibility of the Border and Immigration Agency, it falls to the Home Office to answer detailed statistical questions.

Nia Griffith: What measures he has put in place to increase co-operation with other Government departments to improve the rehabilitation of offenders.

David Hanson: The new public service agreements, in particular on making communities safer and on socially excluded adults, provide important levers to support a cross-Government focus on offender rehabilitation and reducing reoffending. To provide strategic direction for that work, and to promote an effective cross-Government partnership response, the Under-Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy), and I chair a reducing reoffending interministerial group, which includes Ministers from 15 Departments.

David Hanson: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that issue. I looked into a number of the concerns that had been raised recently about ClearSprings properties. There was concern in Basildon and I looked into whether the Conservative-controlled district council, which has a veto on the matter, had actually expressed that veto. I have to report to the hon. Gentleman that had the council done so, we would not be proceeding with the properties in Basildon. The Conservative-controlled district council in Basildon did not veto the proposals—

John Baron: Were they consulted?

David Hanson: They were consulted, as were the police and I am aware of that because my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Angela E. Smith) also has such properties and has referred to me recent press coverage in Basildon on the matter. The Conservative-controlled district council did not veto the properties.

Bridget Prentice: I was very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss a particular case in his constituency. I would say to him that first and foremost, the family courts must look after the interests of the child. It is on that basis that they must move forward. Of course, they must also take into account the evidence that is put in front of them, but the most important thing is to ensure the child's safety and protection.

Bernard Jenkin: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend Part II of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 in relation to the duties, powers and functions of waste regulation authorities concerning the unauthorised deposit of controlled waste on land; and for connected purposes.
	The purpose of the Bill is to promote serious discussion about a shortcoming in the 1990 Act on fly-tipping. For that purpose, the sponsors of the Bill include a distinguished array of former Ministers from both sides of the House, including a former Secretary of State for the Environment and three former Environment Ministers, one of whom, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), has joined me today. The Bill also has the support of the Country Landowners Association and the National Farmers Union. The 1990 Act was a legislative landmark passed under the previous Conservative Government that established the Environment Agency. Among other matters, it sets out the law on the treatment of fly-tipping. The House has long been aware of the problems caused by fly-tipping for both private and public landowners.
	The journey of the Bill to the Floor of the House began on a farm belonging to my constituent, Mr. David Gibbon, from whom I declare that I have accepted hospitality, though below the threshold for declaration in the register. In August last year, a lorry was caught red-handed dumping bags of asbestos on Mr. Gibbon's farm at South Fambridge in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois), who I am pleased to see in his place and who, I am sure, would have sponsored the Bill, had he not been on the Opposition Front Bench. The manager at the farm in question, who had been wisely advised not to approach such criminals on his own, took the vehicle registration details and immediately called the police. The Environment Agency was also subsequently informed.
	I regret to inform the House that neither Essex police nor the Environment Agency took any substantial interest in the crime. Despite the fact that asbestos was bagged, correctly tagged and therefore lawfully removed from wherever it came from, and an address was found among the rubbish, little investigation was carried out. The vehicle registration, of course, proved to be false, and the only conclusion to be drawn was that it was the act of a rogue trader. At this point, the story ends, and no public authority took any further interest in the matter.
	My constituent initially refused to remove the dumped asbestos, on the very reasonable basis that it was not his responsibility. Ironically, if it had been dumped a mere 6 ft in a different direction, it would have been the responsibility of the highways authority and would automatically have been removed by the Environment Agency. As the Minister stated in a letter to me dated 1 November last year:
	"Where there is fly-tipping on public land, the local authority or the Environment Agency will bear the cost of removal and any subsequent investigation. However, clearing illegally dumped waste from privately owned land is more difficult".
	I see the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) is in her place and kindly listening to the debate.
	Eventually Mr. Gibbon had to pay almost £3,000 for the waste to be removed by a private contractor. Under the law as it stands, responsible victims of such a crime are forced to pay up, while the perpetrators get off scot-free. Mr. Gibbon did not, under section 33 of the 1990 Act
	"deposit controlled waste, or knowingly cause or knowingly permit controlled waste to be deposited",
	but according to the Environment Agency, the fact that he had been fly-tipped meant that he was in violation of section 33(1)(b) because he was, as the 1990 Act describes it, keeping controlled waste on his land. He was therefore committing a criminal offence for no other reason than that he himself was a victim of a crime.
	The problem that my Bill seeks to address is simple. Rubbish dumped on public land automatically becomes the responsibility of the local authority or the Environment Agency to clear up, but those authorities are not responsible for clearing up rubbish dumped on private land. On the contrary, if a private landowner does not clear it up, the Environment Agency will prosecute them for not doing so. That is grossly unfair on private landowners, who, by being the victims of crime, become criminals in the eyes of the law.
	The problem is not uncommon. An Environment Agency survey published in January 2007 shows that 16 per cent. of farms in England and Wales suffered fly-tipping over a 12-month period. As Mr. Gibbon's case makes clear, the cost of clean-up can be very expensive. Indeed, the Waste Management (England and Wales) Regulations 2006 have only increased the costs for private landowners. Since I began work on the Bill, a number of similar cases have been brought to my attention. For example, Freddie de Lisle in Hungarton in Leicestershire had to pay £435 to have suspected asbestos removed from his land after it was illegally dumped. In Wales, the Powys castle estate had to pay out more than £1,000 over the course of three incidents involving clothing, a burnt-out car and two unmarked 45-gallon oil drums.
	The issue does not only affect farmers. Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust recently announced that it is considering closing its woodlands because of fly-tipping. The costs of the continual clear-ups are eating into its limited resources, which are, of course, charitable. Removing the waste is not only expensive but time-consuming and potentially dangerous. A farm worker in Nottingham was injured when an aerosol can exploded as he tried to burn the timber element of some waste, and he was off work for three months as a result of his injuries.
	At present, landowners feel helpless, so it is not surprising that 50 per cent. of those who are suffering from fly-tipping do not bother to report it. Why should they, if it does not lead to a proper investigation of the incident or any prospect of a prosecution? In a 2006 survey, farmers said that in only 22 per cent. of cases had the police investigated their complaints, even though fly-tipping is a criminal offence.
	I am grateful to the Country Land and Business Association for its assistance in drafting the Bill, which aims to protect landowners from an over-zealous interpretation of the present law. I propose two changes. The first would place an obligation on the Environment Agency or the relevant local authority to remove waste if the landowner
	"did not knowingly cause or knowingly permit"
	the waste to be deposited.
	In her letter, the Under-Secretary claimed that that would create "a fly-tippers' charter", but that is nonsense, because the law as it stands is a fly-tippers' charter. The Environment Agency already automatically picks up all the rubbish on public land. The Government may fear rogue landowners who would encourage illegal fly-tipping on their land for backhanders, but the Environment Agency would still have the power to serve a clear-up notice on such a landowner, if it suspected their involvement, which might include failure to take reasonable steps to prevent such illegal dumping.
	My second proposed change would place a duty on the relevant authority to investigate incidents of fly-tipping. As the Minister said in her correspondence, that would place additional burdens on authorities, which already have to remove waste dumped on public land. However, the present law is clearly absurd. What is the point of having a criminal offence of fly-tipping on the statute book, if nobody is even going to investigate those crimes?
	The case for the changes is clear. Far from creating a fly-tippers' charter, the obligation to investigate and prosecute would help to deter fly-tipping. It is ludicrously unfair that public and private landowners are treated in such grossly different ways. I repeat that had the asbestos in Mr. Gibbon's case been 6 ft away from where it was, he would not have been responsible for its disposal and that duty would have fallen on a public authority.
	I should inform the House that I am disappointed that the Government have indicated that they are not going to support the Bill, because of the additional duties that it would place on local authorities and the Environment Agency. Furthermore, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has expressed his concern that it might encourage illegal dumping. I hope that the House will agree, however, that I have addressed both those concerns. In any case, the Government are welcome to amend my Bill as it makes progress through the House.
	What is the point of the Environment Agency, if it will not actively investigate and deter illegal dumping? Moreover, active investigation and prosecution of fly-tippers should lead to reduced burdens on the public sector, as well as to a cleaner environment. The agency itself recognises its ineffectiveness, saying that
	"fly-tipping on agricultural land is a significant problem in England and Wales".
	The Bill offers concrete measures to protect landowners against fly-tipping and to increase investigations by the authorities to deal with that growing problem. I therefore commend it to the House before we find more and more copies of the Lisbon treaty dumped on public and private land throughout this country.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Bernard Jenkin, Mr. John Gummer, Mr. Tim Yeo, Mr. Michael Meacher, Mr. Malcolm Moss, Kate Hoey, Mr. Elfyn Llwyd, Mr. David Crausby, Tony Baldry, Mr. Alan Meale, Lembit Öpik and Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory.

David Miliband: Maybe my hon. Friend is not convinced.
	I want to pay tribute to some of the hon. Members who have genuinely contributed outstandingly to our proceedings. I start by paying tribute to the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague). I believe his approach to Europe to be utterly antediluvian, but he has prosecuted his case in an absolutely brilliant fashion and re-established his reputation as one of the outstanding debaters of our times.
	The hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) has demonstrated again his long-standing commitment to these issues, tabling 154 amendments and making 209 interventions in our proceedings— [ Interruption. ]—so far. That is not an invitation for him to intervene now. He has been indefatigable in asserting, first, that he has been consistent every year since 1992, which is correct, and secondly, that he has always been right in warning that the European superstate is about to gobble us up, about which I believe he is profoundly wrong. He and I rarely see eye to eye on these matters, but he has been active on every day of our scrutiny of the treaty and the Bill, and I pay tribute to his persistence.

Ian Lucas: I was simply going to ask the Foreign Secretary whether he agrees that one of the most enlightening parts of the debate is that the hon. Member for Stone clearly leads for the Conservative party on these matters?

David Miliband: It is not as simple as that. The right hon. Gentleman is right in that if the measure was not changed we could not opt out. However, as soon as the measure was amended, we would have the right to look at whether we wanted to opt into it.
	On foreign policy, the Opposition have supported the Government's actions in the western Balkans. As we have seen in the Balkans, Lebanon and Chad, the EU can play a role in promoting security and stability in neighbouring countries. It is not an alternative to UK foreign policy, but a means—and an important one—for its implementation.
	As I said on 19 February, although the treaty will not change the fundamental nature of common foreign and security policy co-operation, it will enhance the efficiency, effectiveness and coherence of current arrangements. It will do so first by making the European Council—made up of the member states of the EU—responsible for setting the EU's strategic priorities for all external action; secondly, by strengthening the coherence of the EU's external action through a high representative, appointed by and accountable to member states, who replaces the current high representative and the Commissioner for External Affairs; and, thirdly, by bringing together existing Commission and Council officials, together with member state secondees, into a single External Action Service. All of that will bring real benefits.
	On development, Europe is the world's biggest aid donor, providing more than 55 per cent. of total aid to more than 160 countries, and the Lisbon treaty will help ensure that, for the first time, that money is allocated in line with UK development policy. It makes clear that EU development aid must have
	"as its primary objective the reduction, and in the long term, the eradication of poverty".
	It will legally enshrine the principles of "impartiality", "non-discrimination" and "neutrality" for the deployment of humanitarian aid. That will help ensure that humanitarian aid is delivered on the basis of need, not on the basis of politics or of geography.

Mike Gapes: Does my right hon. Friend believe that it would be particularly apposite if the House were to pass this Bill into our decision making today, which is the 60th anniversary of the murder by defenestration of the democratic Czechoslovakian Prime Minister, Jan Masaryk, by the communist regime? Supporting the Bill today would be a symbol of the new Europe and the new European Union in which we are all united.

David Miliband: I was coming to the obsession with the myths about the EU. Last week, we heard one that I thought had been buried for good. At Prime Minister's questions, the Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), announced that the treaty will bring in a "United States of Europe." A United States of Europe means one country, one Government, one currency and every single country of the EU reduced to the status of a county council. Under no circumstances could that be a true description of the Lisbon treaty, which is why no one among the opponents of the treaty believes it—not even the Dutch Party for the Animals, with which the Conservative party is now allied on the issue.
	If the right hon. Member for Witney really believes that the treaty means a United States of Europe, he is honour bound to recommend that we leave the EU if the treaty is ratified. I hope that when the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks responds on behalf of the Opposition, he will either disown his leader's comment or say how he can foresee living in such an EU, because many Labour Members have doubts about what the Conservative party's real agenda is in respect of the EU.

David Miliband: We will test the democratic mandate at the next general election and see what the result is.
	The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks claims that the new high representative
	"will in time not merely supplement Members States' voices in foreign affairs, but replace them".
	That is the claim even though the European Scrutiny Committee has said that
	"the largely intergovernmental nature of the CFSP and ESDP will be maintained, with no significant departures from the arrangements which currently apply".
	The hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) claims that
	"European integration threaten to tear the....NATO alliance apart",
	but that runs directly against what the US State Department and NATO's Secretary-General have said about the treaty. The NATO Secretary-General said that
	"no one today would still seriously assert that NATO and the EU are rivals whose aim is to drive each other out of business".
	Clearly, he has not met the hon. Member for Woodspring.
	The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) speaks on energy for the Conservative party. This is what he said:
	"A gas dispute in Bavaria could ultimately lead to gas rationing in Birmingham."

William Hague: I begin on a note of agreement with the Foreign Secretary. Given that there are so many disagreements, it is a happy note on which to start. He paid many warm tributes to those of us who have taken part in the debates over the past couple of months. He was very generous to me—if being called antediluvian is a form of generosity; I suppose in Parliament we are grateful for small compliments. Indeed, he has shown himself to be a vigorous debater throughout all our proceedings, and one of the brightest members of the Cabinet, as he is known to be, although in the current state of the Government that may not be such an extraordinary accolade.
	I certainly pay tribute to the Minister for Europe who, as the Foreign Secretary said, has always performed with great patience and humour, and will probably now become the portable lightning conductor for the Government and move from one Department to another. I also pay tribute to many Labour Members. The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) has been quoted by all of us in almost every speech we have given. The hon. Member for Glasgow, South-West (Mr. Davidson) vied with me to persecute the Liberal Democrats and call for a referendum. The right hon. Member for Leicester, West (Ms Hewitt) spoke many times, only to meet in the final hours the tragic news that Peter Mandelson may be offered a second term.
	An extraordinary number—84—of my right hon. and hon. Friends have taken part in these proceedings. When one of them has spoken 210 times—it feels to those of us who often talk to him in the No Lobby like 310 times—that is a considerable debating contribution. I join the Secretary of State in the camaraderie that has infused those of us who have participated in the debate. I thought that he was going to propose an annual reunion at one stage, but perhaps we will not go that far.
	The Opposition's case on the Bill's Third Reading is simple: its effect is to ratify a treaty that is overwhelmingly the same in its content as the rejected EU constitution. Its scrutiny by the House has not been as extensive or as detailed as it should have been, or indeed as was promised. Amendments supported by Members in all parts of the House that would have made improvements to the future scrutiny of changes to our relations with the European Union have been rejected. Above all, it continues to be the case that the Bill would come into force without ever being submitted for the consent of the British people in either a general election or a referendum. For all those reasons, we shall have no hesitation in voting against Third Reading tonight.
	We have, of course, had many exchanges across the Floor of the House about whether the Lisbon treaty, on which a referendum is being denied, is essentially the same as the EU constitution on which a referendum was promised in the House. Giscard d'Estaing has probably been quoted more often in this Parliament during the last couple of months than he has been in the French Parliament in the last couple of decades. His well-known view that
	"all the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way"
	is shared overwhelmingly by the Governments and institutions of the European Union other than our own.
	The resolution of the European Parliament on the matter welcomed
	"the fact that the mandate safeguards the substance of the Constitutional treaty."
	The Slovenian Prime Minister, who currently holds the European Union presidency, said that in the new treaty, the EU was given
	"content that is not essentially different from the constitutional treaty...All key institutional solutions remain...Some symbolic elements will be cleared up and some formulations toned down."
	That is the truth of the matter, but such disarming honesty and, indeed, enthusiasm for the similarity between the two documents has not extended to the British Government. They have maintained that the constitutional nature of the first document is not replicated in the second, despite the fact that the elements of the constitution identified by the current Lord Chancellor as fundamentally constitutional, such as the creation of an EU president and Foreign Minister, are present in the new treaty just as much as they were in the old one. This has been their case: that the first treaty was constitutional in nature and the second one is not, so there is no need for a referendum.

William Hague: That is a good point, which has been raised during our debates. According to some of the documents leaked from the Slovenian presidency, many matters such as the precise demarcation of the roles of the EU president and the EU high representative have not been resolved. The stage is set for a turf war in the European Union.
	As I was saying, the Government's case has been that the first document was constitutional and the second was not—or at least, that was the argument until the Foreign Secretary opined on the matter last Wednesday, when he made one or two statements on the subject that were rather revealing. He argued that manifesto promises were basically irrelevant to the question of a referendum. He argued that whether to hold a referendum should be decided on the basis of the content of the treaty, irrespective of the manifesto commitments given—in contradistinction to my argument that it is not just the content of a treaty that counts, and that the overriding issue of principle is the manifesto promises that should be upheld whenever possible.
	The Foreign Secretary said that what he called the "constitutional practice" in this country was to hold a referendum when there was
	"a fundamental shift in the balance of power".—[ Official Report, 5 March 2008; Vol. 472, c. 1777.]
	To talk of constitutional practice when only one United Kingdom-wide referendum has ever been held is probably a little premature. When questioned on whether a referendum on the EU constitution was promised in 2004 because it represented a fundamental shift in the balance of power, the right hon. Gentleman said that that was not the reason. The reason why a referendum was promised on that occasion, and therefore was in the Labour party's election manifesto, was apparently to "clear the air" on the European issue. So after all the talk of constitutional practice and the necessity for a declaration of the contents of the treaty to be decisive in determining whether a referendum was held, it turned out that in the Foreign Secretary's own view, the Government of whom he was part promised a referendum not because of any constitutional practice or any particular contents of the previous treaty, but because they wanted to clear the air.

William Hague: I will give way in due course.
	The constitutional doctrine now appears to be that a referendum is held when the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister—who were both in the Government when a referendum was promised—want to clear the air.
	The potential for holding referendums when there is a need to clear the air is probably limitless, given the number of issues at any one time on which the air needs to be cleared. Whether it be the closure of thousands of post offices at the hands of an incompetent Government or the release ahead of time of thousands of prisoners, which is even more incompetent, there are many issues on which people would love to clear the air. If a national ballot is to be held every time we need to clear the air, how about having a general election, so that we can clear out the Government as well?
	As the Foreign Secretary is perhaps the brightest member of the Cabinet, the confusion into which he entered by making this argument is a sure sign of the intellectual incoherence to which the Government have been reduced. The reason why this is so revealing is because it confirms a truth that has been put to the Government several times during the course of our debates by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), who is not present today. I have always respected his support for the treaty and opposition to a referendum, because he has always been so clear about that, even in general election campaigns. He has called on the Foreign Secretary to stop the nonsense of pretending that the two treaties are fundamentally different, and to admit that the early commitment to a referendum was entirely for short-term party motives, for which the term "clear the air" is the shorthand.
	For the truth is that the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister now believe that the former Prime Minister made a serious error in promising a referendum, and that that error has reduced them to arguing that something that is 90 per cent. the same is fundamentally different. The Government promised a referendum in 2004 because they were approaching a general election and the former Prime Minister thought he might even win a referendum, whereas today we are probably somewhat further from an election and the current Prime Minister thinks that winning a referendum is beyond him. That is the truth of the matter.

William Hague: I mean none of those things. Only the Liberal Democrats have gone on about the article that allows a withdrawal from the European Union. It is one of the least likely treaty articles to be employed, which is why our consideration in these debates must be on the many other articles that will be employed. I am simply saying what I said a few moments ago: given the steady growth in the EU's powers, I can see the case for a constitutional safeguard. I would have thought that many Members across the House would also be able to see that.
	The Government have also been engaged in promoting as largely innocuous a treaty that was sufficiently concerning to them for them to have opposed large parts of its content for some years. As I pointed out on Second Reading, they opposed the EU high representative chairing a meeting of Foreign Ministers; they also opposed the obligation to ask the high representative to speak for the EU at the UN Security Council when there is a common position. They.
	opposed the creation of an EU diplomatic service and said that they could not agree to the self-amending nature of the treaty. They opposed the election of the President of the Commission by the European Parliament. They tried to prevent employment, public health, consumer protection and transport networks from becoming shared competences with the EU. They objected to the article on a common defence policy, and they opposed the collapsing of the third pillar on justice and home affairs, but they eventually settled for those and many other things that they had maintained were wrong or unacceptable.
	Many of the objections that right hon. and hon. Members have made to the treaty in these proceedings were objections that Ministers made themselves until recently, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) pointed out. Once again, the Government have not been straight with the country. They have taken to arguing that such things are now of little importance, but the truth is that they decided to give way on them rather than not have an agreement.
	What is worse is that the Government have also taken to arguing that certain concepts introduced in the treaty have been knocking around for a long time. The Foreign Secretary argued last Wednesday that
	"the provisions on legal personality have been around since Maastricht, which was pioneered through the House by the Conservative party."—[ Official Report, 5 March 2008; Vol. 472, c. 1778.]
	Again, the implication is that nothing much is going on. In fact, the Lisbon treaty's provisions on the EU's legal personality, which are identical to those of the EU constitution, are a major change to the current situation. Since Maastricht, the EC has had legal personality, but the EU has not, hence the three-pillar structure. That is why the proposal at Amsterdam to give the EU a single legal personality merited this remark from Tony Blair at the Dispatch Box:
	"We have also ruled out other potentially damaging proposals. For example, others wanted to give the European Union explicit legal personality across all the pillars of the treaty. At our insistence, that was removed."—[ Official Report, 18 June 1997; Vol. 296, c. 314.]
	If that was a "potentially damaging" change in the view of the then Prime Minister in 1997, it cannot now, in 2008, have been around since Maastricht. Part of the case against the Third Reading of the Bill is that a Government who have been through so many contortions, inversions of principle and twists of logic have emerged with a case in favour of the treaty so peppered with holes that they have shot themselves, and so accompanied by unsubstantiated assertions that the treaty should not be passed without the holding of the referendum that these Ministers promised.

William Hague: My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. The six words on climate change, which involved no new procedures and powers, were debated for several hours under the Government's procedural motion, which meant that some five minutes were spent on each letter. The 13 pages on justice and home affairs, however, had the same amount of time for debate, which worked out at 45 seconds per line.
	My hon. Friend brings me to the next part of my case against Third Reading. The line-by-line scrutiny that a Bill of this nature should receive and that the Government promised, partly as a response to the demand for a referendum, has not taken place in the way that the nation had every right to expect. The media were informed by the Government last autumn that 20 full days of debate would take place in this House, but today we come to the end of those debates after 14 days, compared with 29 days of debate on the treaty of Maastricht. The Bill has only eight clauses yet clause 4, on the increase of the powers of the European Parliament, was debated for less than 15 minutes and clause 5, on the amendment of the founding treaties, was not debated at all.
	The time restrictions imposed and the introduction of themed debates to which so many in the House objected has meant that of the 227 amendments selected for debate just under half were ever reached. As a result, amendments on asylum, borders, migration and visas; on judicial co-operation and civil matters; on freedom of establishment, free movement of workers, intellectual property, personal data and social policy; and on transport were never debated at all. In addition, the amendments on defence were never debated, even though the French Government clearly believe that the provisions included in the treaty paved the way for a major change in our defence arrangements.
	In his article in yesterday's  International Herald Tribune, the French Foreign Minister said that the French EU presidency, beginning on 1 July, would
	"prepare the implementation of permanent structured cooperation".
	He said:
	"The European Security and Defence Policy inscribed in the Lisbon Treaty is finally allowing...the EU...to fully assume its role on the international scene."
	There may be, in the minds of some hon. Members, a case for such a development—there is a case against such a development—but it is beyond argument that such changes are of enormous importance to the defence posture of this country and the performance and future of NATO. A Bill that permits such changes in the area of defence but on which there has been no detailed debate in the House of Commons concerning those provisions is not a Bill that should receive Third Reading.

William Hague: Let me finish another point, or else nobody else will ever get into this debate.
	I hope, too, that Members of the upper House will examine particularly carefully those issues on which Members from all quarters of this House have expressed concern. The most outstanding example of that, on which—unlike all the other provisions of the Bill—the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) and I saw eye to eye, is clause 6, which continues to provide for the wide-ranging abolition of further national vetoes, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison). It even provides for moving the whole of foreign policy from unanimity to qualified majority voting in the future, without a further treaty and on the basis of approval of an affirmative motion in each House of Parliament. Intense concern about that matter has been reflected in our debates. The Minister for Europe will recall that not a single Member from any party spoke in support of his position except for him. The only Labour Member to speak spoke against the provisions.
	The process unites many of us who have different views about the treaty. I have already mentioned the Liberal Democrat Front-Bench team—or at least its remaining members—in that regard. We are completely at one in finding the procedure inadequate. Until now, changes to European treaties have been a matter for primary legislation. For future changes, which are the equivalent of major treaty changes, to be subject to anything less than primary legislation is another major reduction in the rights and role of our Parliament.

William Hague: I should of course have included the hon. Gentleman, although consideration can be given as to what constitutes a major party in the House. However, so that he may correct me, I give way.

Gerald Howarth: Does the right hon. Lady not accept that the reason why the Conservative party has shifted its position is that the European Union has shifted its position? The British people have found out that the pooling of sovereignty to which she refers has proceeded to such an extent that we, the elected representatives of the people of this country, are no longer able to decide on a whole raft of issues on their behalf because powers have been progressively handed over to Brussels. That is why this party is changing. At least this party is standing up for the people of this country, which is more than she has ever done.

Patricia Hewitt: We have heard arguments along those lines from the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members during these debates, and he refers to Brussels and to Europe as if they were a foreign occupying power—some alien force imposing its laws upon us—instead of an association of which we are willing and leading members. One reason why I support the treaty, and wish that he did, is that far from advancing us inexorably to a united states of Europe or an imagined federalist superstate nightmare, it strengthens the role of member states, national Governments and, specifically, the voting power of the United Kingdom.

David Chaytor: Pursuing the point about the Conservatives' reaction, does my right hon. Friend agree that there is almost a collective sense of denial in the their party, given that a Conservative Government made the three key decisions that took Britain into the European Union, and strengthened our relationship with it? Are they not trying to conceal their responsibility for the very policies that they now oppose?

Edward Davey: I hope that I am not out of order in totally agreeing with the hon. Gentleman.
	What about the other criticisms of Europe? Are they dealt with by the Lisbon treaty? Let us look at the 1997 Conservative manifesto. It complained that Europe was doing too much and pledged to incorporate
	"the principle of subsidiarity into the Treaty."
	That meant the treaty of Amsterdam. That treaty put the principle of subsidiarity into a protocol, but the treaty of Lisbon puts it into the text of the treaties. However, we have heard nothing about that from the Conservatives.
	For many years, my party and I have had a complaint about the EU on the common agricultural policy. There have been times when pro-Europeans such as me have despaired of the EU with respect to the CAP, but it is worth saying that the CAP of 2008 is far less damaging than the CAP of any previous period in the history of the European Community and the EU.
	Let us be clear that more reform is needed, but the process has been going in the right direction. I welcome the Lisbon treaty, because it provides a new dynamic for CAP reform, namely greater democratic accountability and scrutiny, and increases the powers of the European Parliament in its relations with the Council of Ministers over law-making and budget setting. Many more areas of legislation and budget setting will now take place using the co-decision process, including CAP. For Liberal Democrats such as me who have complained about CAP and, indeed, about Europe's democratic deficit for many years, the Lisbon treaty addresses that point with real reforms. Interestingly, Conservative Front Benchers are against extra democracy going to the European Parliament. How very telling!
	Let us take another past problem of the European Union—the fact that the Council of Ministers has always met in secret. Liberal Democrats have led the calls for that to be reformed, and the Lisbon treaty marks a big step forward on that, too. For the first time, the Council will meet in public when a new law is debated and approved. Of course, more should be done to tackle secrecy in this House, in Westminster, in Whitehall and in Brussels, but that is a real victory in the Lisbon treaty, and it should be noted.
	There are many examples of similar improvements by which the anti-European foxes have been shot by the reforms—I would say that they are being massacred by them. Perhaps that explains why the British Conservatives have turned their backs on 26 other Conservative parties across Europe and taken up with the Dutch Party for the Animals.

Edward Davey: I share the concern about falling turnout, but let us be clear: turnout is falling not only in elections to the European Parliament, but in elections to this House and to many local authorities, too. We should all be concerned about that as democrats, but it does not undermine the role of the European Parliament as a democratic forum. I would have thought that the right hon. Gentleman would support that.

William Cash: Will the right hon. Gentleman reflect on the fact that he played a good part in the European Reform Forum discussions, and is on record as having said that the EU needs reform? There was enormous agreement on the basic principles among those on all sides of that debate. Will he be a little more careful about what he says about Euroscepticism? We are not anti-European, we are actually pro-European.

Keith Vaz: That is very helpful. I hope that, if there is a debate, we will have the support of the SNP's spin doctors. Perhaps they will be able to assist. For the time being, we have a treaty that will make a real difference to how the EU operates. I shall give two examples of that, the first of which relates to justice and home affairs.
	I had the privilege of being at the initial Tampere negotiations, which took place in Finland under the Finnish presidency in 1999. When we began the Tampere process, which became the Hague 2 process, we decided that the only way that we could combat major crime problems such as serious organised crime and human trafficking was to co-operate with our European partners. That co-operation is essential. Without co-operation through organisations such as Europol and Eurojust, we will never be able to deal with the people who perpetrate organised crime or with the real problems of immigration.
	The British people are not worried about legal immigration but about illegal immigration. Like other right hon. and hon. Members, I have seen pictures and read stories about how people are exploited by those who bring them in gangs from places such as Moldova. I recently saw a DVD about someone who was brought here from the Punjab and told that they would have a better life in the UK. They were brought from the Punjab to Bucharest, then to Moldova, Moscow, Albania and Amsterdam, and then to the UK. The only way that we can combat the illegal movement of people is through co-operation with our European partners.

Keith Vaz: I have huge respect for the hon. Gentleman as a fellow member of the Select Committee on Home Affairs. I know that he thinks very carefully about these issues. We cannot sit on the sidelines. We have to influence what is happening. We cannot allow this huge, monolithic body, which has 27 members and affects 500 million people, to be run by rules and regulations that were invented 30 years ago. The whole thing would grind to a halt. Enlargement has meant that we need the treaty.
	As for the charter of fundamental rights, let me tell Opposition Members that it was negotiated for our country by Lord Goldsmith. At the start of the negotiations, he was on his own, but by the end of the negotiations, he had convinced all the other European countries that the agenda set forward by the UK was the one that needed to be followed. As we all know, the charter does not extend the laws of this country one iota. What is the fear about having such a statement of the values to which we as members of the European Community need to subscribe?
	Europe is changing. An example of that is the Lisbon agenda, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Stone—although it might have been a slip of the tongue. The Lisbon agenda was supported, I think, by Members on both sides of the House. In 2000, for the first time, economic progress and the operation of the single European market was benchmarked—

William Cash: I would be a good deal more impressed if I thought that the Labour party was prepared to keep its promises on the referendum. Having said that, the question of whether the system works is extremely important, and I want to come to it in a moment. We are not talking about theoretical abstractions, or the theology of sovereignty. We are concerned with practical questions to do with the daily lives of our constituents. That is the acid test.
	On the question of whether we are anti-European, I have been accused in these debates of being a Europhobe, and I should like to say a few things about that. First, I think that I may be entitled to say that my father was killed in Normandy, fighting against tyranny in Europe. Secondly, it happens that I have three grandchildren, one of whom is half Greek, and one of whom is half Spanish. Two of my children were married in France, and I have one daughter-in-law who is Italian, and am about to have another who is half Czech.

William Cash: I really do disagree with the hon. Gentleman. It is an important point, and I recognise that many people in the House had family who were involved in the second world war, but I make the point from the vantage point of being accused of being a Europhobe. I am simply pointing out that the House of Commons was, as de Gaulle said in 1960 when he came here, at the foundation of why he was able to go back to a free France. Actually it is NATO, not the European Union, that preserves peace and security in Europe, and I also say this to the hon. Gentleman: look at what is happening in Kosovo. I have to put those points, because they are extremely important. I should also like to say to him that one need only consider the situation as regards Japan: we engaged in a war with Japan, but nobody could honestly say that the fact that we emerged victorious had anything to do with the European Union.

Keith Vaz: I do not wish to interrupt the hon. Gentleman's peroration, but can he clarify one point? Is he saying that he was against the Nice treaty?

Denis MacShane: The hon. Gentleman, like all Scottish nationalist Members during these debates since I have been in the House, has focused on the problem of fisheries. They have a point, but that was a concession made in 1972 that cannot be brought back without 26 other member states agreeing to it. However, we cannot unilaterally say that, for example, we do not want Ryanjet to land here because it is competition with our national airline.

Denis MacShane: Let me finish my speech, and then there will be time for everybody else.
	The hon. Member for Stone, who you rightly did not call to order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, said—I hope that I am not doing any injustice to his argument—that it was somehow treasonable to vote for the ratification of the treaty of Lisbon. Well, I hope that I am not a traitor to myself, my country, my party, my constituency or any of the other areas that he listed. Much of this rather lurid language does not help; it neither heats up nor illuminates.
	We have had in our past distinguished Members of this House making this point. Here is the former Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, in 1960:
	"I'm not very keen on the Common Market. After all, we beat Germany, and we beat Italy and we saved France, Belgium and Holland. I never see why we should go crawling to them."
	That from a man who is a hero for many of us on my side of the House, but it is, frankly, a ghastly point of view. Alternatively, going to the heart of the point made by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr. MacNeil), here is Churchill speaking in this House in June 1950:
	"we are prepared to consider, and if convinced to accept, the abrogation of national sovereignty".
	He went on to say that
	"national sovereignty is not inviolable, and...it may be—
	safely—
	"diminished for the sake of all the men in all the lands finding their way home together."—[ Official Report, 27 June 1950; Vol. 476, c. 2159.]
	I would argue that 27 European nation states are now trying to find their way to a 21st- century home together that was certainly not on offer when Churchill made that speech.

Denis MacShane: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. I have spent 14 years debating these issues—my maiden speech was on Europe—and the more that I do so, the less I sense that I am absolutely 100 per cent. confident in everything I say. Some modesty and brevity is useful, and I will try to apply that lesson tonight.
	Another great Labour leader, Hugh Gaitskell, said in 1962 that joining the Common Market would mean
	"the end of Britain as an independent nation-state."
	 [ Interruption. ] I detect from the hon. Member for Stone some support for that position. The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), who is not with us tonight, said that signing the treaty of Amsterdam would mean the end of Britain as a nation state. The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks famously said before the 2001 election that to vote for a pro-European Labour party again to be returned to power would mean that Britain would become a foreign land. That hyperbole does neither its Labour nor its Conservative articulators any good at all.
	I want to deal briefly with three of the myths that have been perpetrated throughout this debate—I mean the debate beyond the wide-ranging debate in the House in the past two months that has taken place more generally in recent years. The first myth is the notion of Europe as a behemoth—a giant devouring machine that is eradicating sovereignty and the power of this House of Commons. If one looks at the simple economic facts, 99 per cent. of all Europe's income—its gross national income, to use the technical phrase—stays in the hands of its nation states. Of the 1 per cent. transferred to Brussels, 85 per cent. is immediately transferred to nation states in the form of agricultural subsidies. I share the criticisms of the common agricultural policy, but if we did not have the CAP, we would have a BAP—a British agricultural policy—and all the gentlemen who get the massive subsidies that they now do from Brussels would be making life hell, particularly for Conservative Members, who tend to represent more agricultural communities than my party does, by demanding massive agricultural subsidies. One seventh—15 per cent.—of 1 per cent. of that money stays with the Commission for it to do what it wants with it. I put it to the House that the notion that one can create a super-state or a federal monster, or that one can destroy the national sovereignty of the 27 member states of Europe with just one seventh of 1 per cent. of their money, does not make sense.
	The second great myth is that Europe is dictating all the laws of this House. The shadow Foreign Secretary and I had an exchange during a previous debate, and he brought it up very gently and respectfully again today, quoting the Prime Minister against me, or perhaps me against the Prime Minister. Of course, all Prime Ministers at all times are infallible—they cannot be wrong. I occasionally have a kind of old-fashioned interest in the truth. That has often got in the way of successful politics, which is probably why I am not a successful politician.
	I asked the Library to freshen up its continuing study about the amount of legislation that we decide on in this Parliament that emanates from the European Union. I asked for the document to be sent to me last week after that exchange, but it is publicly available in the Library. It showed that so far this century approximately 10 per cent., at the highest point, of all the laws that we pass are to do with the European Union. Within that 10 per cent., 50 per cent. of trade rules to do with the single market stem from the European Union and 25 per cent. of environmental rules are to do with the European Union. I think that the Prime Minister used the word "regulations"—I do not want to gloss what he said; he did not talk about laws—and, yes, 50 per cent. of our regulations that are to do with the single market originate from the European Union, just as they must for every other country if we want the single market to work for them.
	The Commission has 16,000 employees—fewer than the BBC—and one seventh of 1 per cent. of Europe's gross national income. The House of Commons is still responsible for 90 per cent. of legislation, such as taxation, health spending, education, policing, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, sending people to prison, decisions on whether to go to war, and our main foreign policy alliances. All those matters are settled in this House, as they are in the Assemblée Nationale, the Bundestag, the Sejm, the Cortes and the other national Parliaments in other European countries.
	The second great myth is that the new treaty is identical to the constitutional treaty. I have some knowledge of that matter as the Europe Minister responsible at the time. Conservative Members tend to pray in aid their experience of the Convention. They make interesting historical points, but the main recommendations of the Convention presided over by Giscard d'Estaing were rejected by the intergovernmental conference that followed. The constitutional treaty that emerged from the process was, in turn, rejected by the voters of France and the Netherlands, and it was declared dead here, not so much by my party, but by Conservative members. I remember well the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) saying, "I am a doctor. I know death when I see it. This constitution is dead." The less original Opposition Members referred to the famous dead parrot of lore. We all agreed that the treaty was dead, but for the purposes of anti-European argument, it has to be brought back to life.
	The pledge to have a referendum on which all parties agreed in their 2005 election manifestos related to that constitutional treaty, but it was killed barely a month after the election of new Parliament, and those commitments died with it. At the end of each Session, any laws that have not been passed in this House die. Unless we are introducing a new constitutional innovation in the House that any pledge given in general terms on any issue has to be sustained throughout the eternity of successive Parliaments, I do not understand how Conservative Members can intellectually say that today's treaty is identical to the constitutional treaty that was killed, even if much of the anti-European press make that argument.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Obviously many hon. Members are still seeking to catch my eye, and speeches so far have been lengthy. Unless colleagues can shorten their speeches a little, many people will be disappointed.

Richard Shepherd: I hope to be brief. I am not trying to get into the "Luvvies" column in  Private Eye, unlike the right hon. Members for Leicester, West (Ms Hewitt), for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) and for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane).
	I oppose Third Reading, first for procedural reasons. The imposition of a tailor-made guillotine that limited, in theory, each day's debate on clause 2—the heart and guts of the Bill—to one and a half hours, which had to be amended to allow a little more time, defeated the purpose of providing the measure with legitimacy in the country and the Chamber. My right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary detailed that to some extent.
	On day one, we did not debate borders, visas, asylum and migration—or judicial co-operation in civil matters, which was the third grouping for that day. On day two, we did not debate difficulties in the supply of certain products, meaning energy. On day three, we had only an hour and a half to consider the charter of fundamental rights. Not all Members who were present could speak, and the subject of personal data was simply not discussed. On day four, the internal market and common commercial policy took up the allocated three hours—an amendment to the original guillotine. Not all hon. Members who wished to speak got in. Social policies, free movement of workers and establishment were not debated. Intellectual property and economic and monetary policy were not discussed.
	On day five, the external representation of the EU—the foreign service, or whatever one chooses to call it—took up the three hours. Not everyone could speak and the common security and defence policy, let alone other aspects of that policy, was therefore not debated. On day six, which was about aid and development, competence and policy took up the two hours so that the subject that mattered to the world outside—aid operations—was not debated. Incidentally, we got two hours instead of the hour and a half that was initially allocated.
	On day seven, which was about competences of the EU and its institutions, relationships with member states took up the three hours allocated. Let us remember that the Government graciously altered their guillotine to provide another hour and a half so that the debate had three hours rather than an hour and a half, but what was not debated? The operation of the institutions, the EU constitutional and treaty revision issues and legislative and decision-making procedures —three whole groupings—were not discussed. It is impossible.
	On day eight, the topic was the effect on Parliament—that is what I was really interested in—and it took up the allocated two hours. Again, the Government had graciously extended their guillotine to allow us an extra 60 minutes. However, we still could not discuss in that extra time "Competences: remaining issues" or climate change.
	The custom-made guillotine, introduced in the name of the Labour Chief Whip—the undertaker, as I think of him—and the Foreign Secretary as the leader on the matter, is brutal. However, the other person who signed the motion, of whom we have not seen a whit, is supposedly the Leader of the House. Where is she? Where has she been? She did not introduce the guillotine and did not attest that, on the balance of arguments, it was an appropriate way to consider what is a constitutional change if not in the European scene, then to our constitution. We have signally failed to measure the provisions against what we have and what is held out for us.
	New Labour's impertinence and the self-serving disdain in which it holds anyone who does not share its opinion almost disqualifies it from representative government. People have different views and there is no perfect way in this world, but most of us respect and recognise the purposes of the House. What are they? Has the treaty shifted the balance of power and decision away from us to other institutions? This is not a question of vanity; it concerns the power of the British people to hold to account those who make their laws. What has happened since the originating treaty, during the time I have been in Parliament, has been the constant slicing away at the concept that politicians, instead of a bureaucratic elite, should determine what is right for the people who sent us here.
	I wonder about the ridiculous right hon. Member for Leicester, East. He toured the country when he was Minister for Europe and was the only person in the country who could find only two Eurosceptics, so we know what an open mind he has. One, I recall, was called Kevin. That is how low and absurd some of the personalities of our European debate have now become.
	The right hon. Member for Leicester, West referred to people who spoke in these debates previously. One of them was Peter Shore, whom I want to quote because he spoke on things that matter. He represented a great tradition—I am not knocking the Labour tradition at all—and argued in a debate on a Bill that I introduced and which was the last Bill on which Mrs. Thatcher voted in the House. The Bill, which he supported, addressed two major points about referendums, the first of which was their role. I mention referendums because our amendment in that connection was defeated in the debate on the current Bill. It is for that reason I cannot support this Bill—that among a number of reasons, in fact.
	The first major point about my Bill, said Peter Shore, was
	"the role of the referendum, which offers one of the few possibilities to remedy a fundamental weakness in our constitution. We have no written constitution and no procedures to protect and entrench features of our national and constitutional life. Everything can be changed by a simple majority. Many other countries, as we know, have quite elaborate procedures requiring a majority of two thirds for changes in constitutional matters and arrangements, often backed up with public referendums.
	We have no such defence. Indeed, previously we did not need them, because only this generation of British parliamentary representatives has contemplated handing to others the great prizes of national independence, self-government and the rule of law under our own elected representatives. It would not have occurred to a previous generation to hand to others that which we prize most greatly and have given to other countries throughout the world in the past 50 years. That is the novelty of the proposition, against which, because we did not think it conceivable, we have no defences."—[ Official Report, 21 February 1992; Vol. 204, c. 590.]
	That is the truth of why we are here and what has gone so badly wrong. A simple majority can impose on the House of Commons a guillotine so stringent that we cannot even discuss the contents of a major treaty properly. That is the first thing.
	Secondly, the Government claim that they have the authority of the British people because they are elected. We are all elected. All of us, in our own way, try muddlingly to identify that which best suits the national interest and those who sent us here. But the people know—or rather knew—that, at the end of the day, if we got it wrong, they got rid of us; and they have, as they will again. We have had certain things quoted enough—we have heard Mr. Blair's latest thought, his previous thought, his middle thought and his last thought. We have also had the Prime Minister's attestation that we would have a line-by-line consideration of the treaty and his understanding—he said this—that this treaty would be not the constitutional treaty, but the Lisbon treaty.
	We danced over how many hours we would get and however many days. On clause 2—the heart of the Bill—the debate amounted to 19 hours, which is less time than many of our Bills take in Committee upstairs. Yet we are talking about a constitutional measure for which the Government seek the authority of a vote in the House. It is a shallow vote. They have hollowed out the House and they have hollowed out the British people's ability to hold to account.
	That is what I meant when I mentioned the rule of law. What do we mean by the rule of law? We mean that we expect every citizen of this country to obey the law. They obey the law because they know that it is made by their representatives and they stand behind that; and if the law is wrong, they change it. Now we have heard the former Secretary of State for Health, the right hon. Member for Leicester, West, suggest that we do not understand the world, that somehow it has moved on and that the people out there are better served by, effectively, decisions made by a grand bureaucracy centred in Brussels. The people there are not accountable to us.
	Peter Shore went on to say—and it is true—that even if the European Parliament were democratic, it could not represent the British people as the basis of authority for making law. Why not? Because the people there represent other polities, other nations and other states. The European Parliament is only a congress, in that sense. That we should bear decisions that are made by a majority of others who are not accountable to the people we are sent here to represent is an argument in itself, and a defence of a constitutional arrangement.
	That is what this debate has been about for many of us in the House. That is why for the Government and, I must say, the Liberal Democrats to treat people out there as if they have no say in such matters is the most shocking—indeed, I shall say profoundly shocking—feature of this managed, staged debate. It was not the Government who called an end to the discussion on clause 2; it was the Deputy Speaker, who was mindful to put the Question that all the matters had been debated. The first that I ever saw of it was in the selection of amendments.
	Those are ways in which we reduce ourselves. It is very difficult to make a case in the House now. Everything is guillotined, but that does not matter; we will look at the essence of the treaty. It is very difficult for many outside this place not to see, as I see, that there has been a progressive withdrawal of powers from people and their ability to change them to institutions that are not accountable to them as a people—that is what I mean by polity.
	When I say that this is a land of liberty, I think of the declaration of Arbroath, our Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and those marches as part of a great constitutional settlement. We went out, once upon a time, proud to be associated. Those were the people who made a constitution. I go to America now and what do I hear? There—but not in this country anymore—I hear of the Magna Carta and the great common law. That is one of the things that distinguishes the view of the European Union—the common law versus the civil legal tradition, the Napoleonic code tradition or whatever one wants to call it. I do not knock that tradition; I just observe that it looks at the moon from a different angle from us.
	The common law tradition gives our courts a subordinate position—I should like to remind the, I think, shadow Liberal Democrat Attorney-General that the judges can be dismissed by Parliament, the representatives of the people. That does not happen, because by and large we have confidence in the processes that have been established, not on the back of a treaty written half an hour ago or over 20 months in Europe, but over the practised evolution of our institutions.
	The Minister for Europe, who has giggled his way through these debates in an amiable fashion, has let those great issues go slipping under the carpet. When it came to the very sovereignty of Parliament, what did he say? He said that Dicey was the classic expression of that. If the Minister does not know, the Clerks will tell him: in the third edition, and because of the Irish problems in the 19th century, Dicey came to the conclusion that a referendum might be a device by which to secure something in which we believe, or someone such as me believes—that is, the sovereignty of Parliament, which is the sovereignty of the people. That is why I shall vote against the treaty.

Michael Connarty: From a sedentary position, my right hon. Friend mentioned the word "Tory", although I do not recognise that in the Scottish National party. That party has responded to the wishes of the Scottish people not to be represented by any party that takes the same political line and social balance in its policies as the Conservative party. Perhaps the Scottish National party has not yet realised that even aligning itself with the Conservative party to get its policies through in Scotland may come back to haunt it, as happened to many councils that relied on Conservative support.
	I should like to put on the record my thanks to the Foreign Secretary, the Minister for Europe and their shadow counterparts for how they have led this debate. I have no negative comments about the humour introduced, intellectually and pointedly, by the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague). He quoted Giscard d'Estaing a little too much for me; I was getting a little bored by that. He forgot to quote the Dutch Council of State, which considered the new treaty and said that it was not a constitution. The right hon. Gentleman did not quote the French either; furthermore, even the Danish could not raise a party to campaign for a referendum in their Parliament.
	The reality is that throughout Europe, no party thinks that the treaty is a constitution—except the party that wants to use that for political advantage in this Chamber.

Michael Connarty: No, I will not. I have taken on board Mr. Deputy Speaker's caution about other people wanting to speak. I may have more to say than he is pleased with. Due to the fact that I have been chairing European Scrutiny Committee sittings, I have often had only four or five minutes to speak at the end of a debate in which I would like to have participated more. I have a number of things to say.
	The point is that some people did want a constitution. If they had got away with it, there would have been one treaty, a president of Europe and a Foreign Secretary of Europe, but all those things have been taken out of the treaty. The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks referred to a turf war because of the president of the Council, to whom people still refer as the "president of the EU". If there was going to be a turf war, it would be between the president of the Council—a Council, not Commission, member—and the president of the Commission. That is what happens at the moment. The Council goes into discussions about something that the Commission proposes, and there is a turf war.
	The great thing is that someone will be representing and carrying on the work of the Council in two-and-a-half-year terms, with a Council secretariat. Hopefully, that person will apply more leverage back against the Commission so that the Commission does not have things all its own way, which happens at the moment.
	The shadow Foreign Secretary also asked why there was not primary legislation in respect of common foreign security policy and defence. That suggestion was also put forward by the Foreign Affairs Committee. All we have on the record is the Prime Minister's declaration that any time we move from having a veto to qualified majority voting—using the passerelles, as they are called—that will be decided on the Floor of the House. Why should there not be primary legislation? Given my analysis of the treaty and all the logic that applies to my, and many people's, concern about the sovereignty of the House, why should there not be primary legislation for such far-reaching decisions? That is something for the Government to think about; they have not yet answered our questions about the process that involves this Parliament in the moves that we make in respect of the opt-outs and protocols.
	I was impressed by the many contributions of the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), who unfortunately is no longer in his place. It is amazing that a man of his stature—I knew him when he was a junior Minister in the Scottish Office when I was a council leader fighting against the Thatcher proposals for local government—whose logic, honesty and integrity I have always respected should be sidelined not because of age or lack of talent, but simply because the Eurosceptics have what they tell me is a blocking minority on the Conservative party in opposition. If that is the case, it is a very sad day for the Conservative party and for the people in Britain that it claims to represent—the businesses, the civil society and the constituents whose interests and concerns are helped along by Europe as much as by anything else we can do in this House. I wonder why the right hon. and learned Gentleman has been sidelined.
	In respect of Schengen, the right hon. and learned Gentleman referred to an "à la carte" menu for justice and home affairs. That is one way of looking at it, but not how the UK's approach is regarded by everyone else I meet—in the Conference of Community and European Affairs Committees and in European Parliaments, for example. They respect us, but, in terms of the EU arrangements, they view us as the most detached member. We have no euro and we have no Schengen borders. Contrary to the mythology we heard earlier about Schengen borders, we do not have the same border controls. We made a virtue—I believe it was the wrong thing to do—in our proposals for the 2001 election of our intention not to sign Schengen and not to come within the Schengen borders, but to have our own immigration system. I think that that weakened the Schengen system, just as our non-participation in the euro weakened the euro system.
	That decision bounced back on us and we became a target for illegal immigration. After all, if someone gets into a Schengen country, they will want out of it because they have been given a transit visa, so where do those immigrants head? They go to the nearest non-Schengen country, which is the UK. That is what has happened. We took a terrible decision and if we ever get the necessary opt-ins, it will take us a long time to get the Schengen arrangements working properly.

Sammy Wilson: I imagine that at the end of tonight's debate I will probably be on the losing side after going through the Lobby with those who, as has been the case many times during these debates, find themselves on the right side of the argument but on the wrong side of the vote. That is sad. I believe that the vote this Parliament took last week on the referendum, and that which I suspect will be taken tonight on the treaty itself, will do irreparable damage to our own image, the powers of this Parliament and our country.
	It is clear that there is a distance between a large number of Members of this Parliament and the electorate, to whom Members promised that there would be a referendum when this constitution was finally arranged. I know that many arguments have been made to the effect that this is not a constitution, but simply a treaty. However, as late as June last year, when the negotiations had been going on for some time—I suspect that the Government were aware of what was likely to be agreed and what was not—the Prime Minister was still saying:
	"The manifesto is what we put to the public. We've got to honour that manifesto. That is an issue of trust for me with the electorate."
	Even in the middle of the negotiations, the Prime Minister was still saying that the manifesto pledge was a matter of trust with the electorate, yet that has now been broken.
	I have listened to the arguments that have been made over the days of debate, and again today. The right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) and the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) were telling us that we had nothing to worry about because this was not a constitution. Indeed, as the hon. Gentleman said, let us see what the Dutch, the French and the Danish have said about this, but they, of course, have an interest in playing down the constitutional aspect of the document because they have populations that have made it clear that they will not tolerate a constitution.
	Two of those countries have voted against it. Twelve of the other countries have no axe to grind—they have not had a referendum—and seem to have no great concerns about whether it is a constitutional treaty. I am not going to put their views on the record again, because over the weeks of debate on this subject, hon. Members have put on the record what all of those other 12 countries, the original author of the constitution, the European Parliament and the European Commission have said. They are all on the record as saying, "This is a constitution. This is the same as the document that we negotiated previously, with very little difference."
	The second argument is that the treaty does not represent a massive transfer of power—but let me mention some of the ways in which there is a transfer of power: the setting up of new EU institutions; the weakening of the UK power to block legislation; the reduction of national vetoes on votes in Europe; the new EU powers on health, social security and trade policy; and a legal toolbox for further changes, which is perhaps the most damaging aspect, because there can be more changes without us considering them in this form again.
	We are told, and many hon. Members have put it on the record again, that the sort of language used in the document has been chosen because it is important for the content and the real intent to be hidden in some way. The Prime Minister of Luxembourg said:
	"Britain is different. Of course there will be a transfer of sovereignty"—
	it does not matter what is said here; those who do not want to highlight the transfer of sovereignty will try to hide it—
	"But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to the fact?"
	Of course he would not, not when there is a sceptical public in the United Kingdom.
	The other reason suggested as to why the arguments against the treaty should not be listened to is that we are "scaremongering". It is difficult to take lectures about scaremongering when hon. Members imply that if we do not keep faith with the EU and the treaty we will be pushed back into a world war: apparently we will be at Germany's throat, we will be fighting the French, or we will be after the Spanish. The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) implied that if we do not vote for the Bill, somehow or other paedophiles will run free around Europe, guns will be all over the place, and we will not even get a European spaceship.

Sammy Wilson: The hon. Gentleman can use whatever name he wants for the Foreign Minister, the president and the diplomatic corps, but they still exist. Let me quote the Foreign Affairs Committee. It has a Labour majority, and the Labour Government are trying to sell us the idea that there is nothing to worry about. The FAC says:
	"the Government risks underestimating, and certainly is downplaying in public, the importance and potential of the new foreign policy institutions established by the Lisbon Treaty, namely the new High Representative"—
	I do not care what the person is called; he is a Foreign Minister—
	"and the European External Action Service"—
	the European diplomatic service.
	"We recommend that the Government should publicly acknowledge the significance of the foreign policy aspects of the Lisbon Treaty."
	Even a Labour-dominated Committee of this House was prepared to accept that there is something in the treaty that the Government had said that they did not want, but which they had got. The Government then said, "It doesn't matter because we're not really concerned about it," and told us that we were scaremongering.

Barry Sheerman: Indeed—but I found myself observing the way in which the various speakers in the debate reacted to each other's contributions.
	I shall vote for the Bill tonight. I must confess—this is a confessional, is it not, for Members who have been around as long as I am—that I originally voted against Europe in that referendum when we had a choice. It was a long time ago, when I was a callow youth, a young university teacher, and I got it wrong. The more experience I have had of politics, of being a politician and of being in this place, the more embarrassed I have felt about the fact that I got it wrong on that occasion. However, I have never liked referendums. I know that they have been described as a creature of Napoleon, but I believe that if we refer to antiquity we will find that certain Roman emperors used a form of referendum to get their own way, and I know that the Italians used them under Mussolini.
	In the Labour party, I blame Tony Benn. I had the room next to him in the House at one stage and I got on with him extremely well personally, but I never liked his politics, and his recounting of history through those diaries showed a world that I did not recognise and do not remember. I think that one of the great disservices that he did the Labour party was when he persuaded Harold Wilson, at a time when Harold Wilson was vulnerable to what was happening on the left of the party, into thinking that a referendum was the answer.
	During these debates I have heard many people say that it is all about expediency, but we, as parliamentarians, are politicians, and there have been times when I have seen all parties acting in a politically expedient way. The official Opposition might be doing that at present. I listened intently to the speeches on Second Reading and I was impressed by the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague). He is the best entertainer and performer in the House at present; he is an outstanding debater. However, when I subsequently read the Second Reading speeches, and thought about them and took out the humour, I found that there was not much substance to tell me what his position was on Europe.
	From listening to or reading the contributions of the hon. Members for Stone (Mr. Cash) and for Aldridge-Brownhills and their group, I know precisely where they are coming from and what they believe; they articulate it passionately, although not always politely. I also know the position of the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) and that little group around him that represent that strong and remarkable tradition in his party of being both liberal-minded Conservatives and pro-European. I do not say this to make a political point, but I share some of their concerns that something is going on in the modern Conservative party and that prospective members who hold similar views to those of the right hon. and learned Gentleman are being screened out from standing for winnable constituencies. I do not know whether that is because of the influence of some noble Lord, or whether there has been a worrying shift in Conservative party politics, but that sort of Conservative is being eliminated from the parliamentary party. As has been mentioned, very few of the younger generation of Members have made pro-European speeches.
	Let me get to the nub of why I shall support the Bill. I must confess that I get fed up with Europe. I get irritated by the messiness and clumsiness of it, and I hate some of the effects of the former treaties. For instance, I do not like the fact that we have a voting system under which we do not really know who our MEPs are. Under the old system, we knew exactly—

Barry Sheerman: I was merely seeking to prove my credentials for voting for Third Reading by showing that I am not a pushover in any way. I was trying to say that, as a—reasonably—objective person, I do not like many aspects of drift in Europe and also some elements of this treaty. In political life we must judge things in the round, however. There are things we agree with, and other things we disagree with, and overall this treaty recommends itself to me and to my colleagues, and I believe that there will be a majority in favour of Third Reading in the House tonight.
	That does not mean that there are not elements of the treaty that could be forensically studied and on which I would have misgivings. I think that all Members would agree with that, if we were honest. We do not agree with 100 per cent. of anything; I certainly do not. As I have said, I also thought that way about Maastricht, and certainly about the new voting arrangements under which we do not know who our regional MEPs are because they do not have a defined constituency. I have never liked that. Looking to the future, I do not unreservedly welcome the possibility of Turkey joining the EU. That makes my position slightly different from that of those who say that the entire treaty is right; I think that the majority of it is right.
	I have not been present for all the debates, but although I understand their position I am not convinced by the arguments that I have heard from articulate Members from both sides of the House—who have voted against the Bill in Committee—that the treaty is the same as the constitution. One reason why I shall be voting in favour of Third reading is that the treaty is fundamentally different from the constitution. I share the view on why Giscard d'Estaing said what he said; it made me very angry when during a long debate that I attended yet another speaker stood up to quote Giscard d'Estaing.
	One reason why I like the treaty—and prefer it to the constitution—is because it builds incrementally on other treaties. The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills talked about English common law being built up over centuries. Europe is new, and we are building its measures up in a way that is parallel to the building up of English common law. We have had a series of treaties, and I like that process; one of the reasons why I shall vote in favour of Third Reading is because the treaty builds incrementally.
	I was a Member of this House at the time of debate on the Maastricht treaty, and I voted on it, as you did, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I remember all the arguments then, saying how wicked and iniquitous it was to have a guillotine. Members used to say that Mrs.—now Baroness—Thatcher was wicked to introduce guillotines on such important matters and that that was the end of parliamentary democracy as we knew it; and we have heard the same arguments again over the past weeks. However, we must see such steps in the context of Governments having to get their business through. They will get their business done; I am afraid that that is the nature of this place. However, it must be said that Lisbon is a much less significant treaty than Maastricht; that was the big hurdle.
	The Lisbon treaty is better than the original constitution. The constitution would have wiped out all the previous treaties and started again. I did not like that; I did not think it was necessary. As a politician, I preferred an accretion of effort—building on the last thing that we had constructed and modifying it and changing the bits that have not worked or that we did not like. I do not like the common agricultural policy and what it has done to our agriculture, and I do not like aspects of the common fisheries policy, but I do like other bits of the treaties.
	Let me explain why I shall go home tonight content about voting for Third Reading. My generation was born during the dark period when this House was being bombed by German aircraft. We can remember the second world war; I was born towards the end of it, but I can remember what Europe did to itself then. I think what a wonderful life I have had and what a wonderful life my children and grandchildren will have bearing in mind certain ghastly things in English history. There are wonderful things about English history, but for goodness' sake there have been wars after wars. The Napoleonic wars were followed by more wars and then by the first world war. The war that brought more of my generation into politics than any other was the first world war, because we thought that it should never happen again. One can read about the history of the first world war and the disgraceful decisions taken by politicians of every party across Europe that made that war happen and made millions of young men die in the trenches. Like many people of my generation, I came into politics to build a country and a Europe where that would never happen again.
	I have gone on about this in my interventions, but I believe that this treaty builds on the things that we have secured over the years since we became part of the European Union—a European group of nations. This treaty will help to secure the maintenance of peace and prosperity. Let us not underestimate this country's enormous prosperity. Although it brings all sorts of problems, it also brings something that one finds in the American constitution, but not in ours—the pursuit of happiness. I believe that we come into politics so that the people—the people in Huddersfield whom I represent and the people whom we all represent—can have the freedom that they want to pursue the good life and happiness.
	People have said that we do not have a written constitution. We do not have it in one document, but we have lots of bits of our written constitution and they are all important. They are not tidy or joined up, but they exist and I do not believe that this treaty contravenes them. It becomes part of this great synthesis as we progress—and not just as an old-fashioned nation state that thought it could do anything
	I hope that when people talk about the nation state they look back at what the nation state brought us—the horrific periods of our experience as a nation—and what it meant, perhaps not for the ruling classes that run the country but for the poor bloody infantry that fought the wars, dug the ditches and did all the ghastly things that happened —[Interruption] They should also look back on slavery and the dreadful things done in the name of the nation state.
	This exclusive club and company has been discussing the treaty for so many days and I feel honoured to have had the opportunity to put some things on the record. I am not passionate enough to condemn people for their positions—I understand where they come from and my position comes slightly from the outside. This Third Reading and this treaty deserve my support and that of all sensible, good-thinking Members of this House.

David Heathcoat-Amory: The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) hardly gave a ringing endorsement of the treaty. He said that it contained parts he did not like, but that on balance he would vote for it. That is an indictment of a treaty that should be at the end of a reform process. Europe should by now have addressed the widely shared concerns about its procedures and policies. It is worth reminding ourselves that the treaty was conceived seven years ago—it had a long gestation period—and was launched in the Laeken declaration of 2001, in which the Heads of Government who were meeting in that Belgian town called for Europe to reform itself and described Europe as being undemocratic, complicated and remote.
	The Lisbon treaty is the result of a failed reform process. It is obviously a failure. It runs to nearly 300 pages of appalling Eurojargon, so it is completely inaccessible to the ordinary voter. It is designed to be so, because the people behind it knew that the more complicated they made it, the less likely it was that people would be asked to vote on it. That was admitted by one of the vice-presidents of the Convention on the Future of Europe, Mr. Amato, who conceded that if it was designed to be a popular document, it might be put to a popular vote—and they would never risk that.
	This reform process has been a failure, because it makes Europe more remote. The very institutions that caused much of the grief have been given more powers. The decisions will be made by more powerful institutions more remote from the ordinary citizen. That not only ignores the instruction given in the Laeken declaration that Europe should be moved "closer" to the citizen; it defies and contradicts it. How can we do that when decisions on a range of new policy matters are to be taken not in the national Parliaments but in the most remote tier of government—the European Union? It is not surprising that this document, or one very much like it, was rejected by the French and Dutch electorates. The problem with the European Union is that "no" is taken to mean "yes".
	Another myth is that without the treaty, paralysis would result. We have been told that. It has been said in the debate that the treaty is needed to govern a Europe of 27 countries. I was told during the Convention on the Future of Europe that the constitutional treaty was necessary for enlargement. Indeed, Ministers told me that if I was against the constitutional treaty, I was therefore against enlargement. In the same way, we are now told that if we are against spending more money on the European budget—our contributions will soon go up to £6 billion a year—we are against enlargement. However, enlargement happened as a result of the Convention on the Future of Europe. Another 10 countries joined, and another two have joined since, and there has been no paralysis.
	I ask any hon. Member who believes that there has been paralysis to spend half an hour attending at least part of the European Scrutiny Committee's weekly meeting. They can now do that because, in a radical new procedure, hon. Members can actually attend at least part of a Committee of their own House. They will see a torrent of legislation from Brussels. More than 1,000 new instruments a year are being examined. There has been no paralysis even under the existing treaties, so it is a complete Euromyth that we need a new treaty for a Europe of 27 countries.
	When the original constitutional treaty was decisively rejected, Europe reverted to its old, familiar method of secrecy. All the negotiations that took place last year to revive the treaty were in secret, and there was only a 48-hour gap between its publication and its agreement at the European Council meeting in Brussels in June. We were told in the run-up to the treaty's publication that the public had to be involved and that parliamentary scrutiny was essential. The need for openness and transparency and the public's right to know were reasserted in a series of conclusions from successive European Councils. They did not mean it, and those things did not happen. It all took place in secret. The public were not supposed to know what was going on or to scrutinise what happened in those negotiations.
	The result is a treaty that, in all material respects, is the same as the failed constitutional treaty. The hon. Member for Huddersfield said that the treaty was different because it differed in form. He said that instead of abolishing the existing treaties, it would amend them. I judge treaties and constitutions by their substance—by what is in them and by their legal effect. The hon. Gentleman ignored the clear conclusion of two Select Committees that, in all material respects, the two documents were similar, if not the same. We have a treaty that is the same in substance as the constitutional treaty. I see the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty), the Chairman of my Committee, shaking his head, but I remind him of the Committee's conclusion:
	"Taken as a whole, the Reform Treaty produces a general framework which is substantially equivalent to the Constitutional Treaty."
	The Foreign Affairs Committee said:
	"We conclude that there is no material difference between the provisions on foreign affairs in the Constitutional Treaty which the Government made subject to approval in a referendum and those in the Lisbon Treaty on which a referendum is being denied."
	Two Select Committees with Labour Chairmen and Labour majorities unanimously concluded that the documents are the same in substance.
	Of course, it is true that the Government did not want the treaty. I listened to day after day of speeches and amendments during the Convention on the Future of Europe. The Government representative tabled 295 amendments in total, which I have in my hand. The Government have refused to publish that list. It is very difficult to get hold of it—one has to trawl through European websites and separate out all the amendments tabled by the other 105 delegates to the Convention, but we have done that and there were 295. Of those, 33 were accepted on such epic matters as changing "common market" to "internal market" and changing the reference to member states' "internal law" to read "national law". On matters of trivia, the Government tended to win, but on substantive matters they lost time and again. The Government are defending a treaty that they did not want. They certainly did not want the substance of it.
	The treaty is indisputably constitutional in character. It provides for a division of powers and does so on terms that are entirely favourable to the EU. I agree with what the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) said in his powerful speech about the irreversibility of the process. Once we give away those powers, we will never get them back. British history is a long struggle to get powers under the control of those who are accountable to the people. Many wars have been fought to achieve that, and here we are giving those powers away in a treaty. It defies belief that a free Parliament should do that without losing a war.
	The treaty explicitly asserts the supremacy of EU law. That cannot be found in the existing treaties. This treaty repeats and writes down the self-interested case law of the European Court of Justice. It is a major advance for the ECJ to have in a treaty what it has up to now only asserted in its own case law.
	The treaty also creates a self-amending procedure through the so-called ratchet or passerelle clauses so that in future it can transfer more powers away from national Parliaments and member states up to the EU without the need for the traditional intergovernmental conference, parliamentary legislation or referendums. Those at the top of the EU in Brussels have decided that they will never again ask the people what they think. They have dismissed the people and given those powers to themselves.
	The treaty creates a Union that is all-powerful but politically weak. It is a hollow institution because it lacks popular allegiance and legitimacy. The reason for that is fundamental. Europe is not a single political entity on which democracy can operate. There is no European public opinion, as such. There is no single European electorate and no language of Europe. There is no shared political experience. In short, there is no demos on which democracy can operate. People obstinately identify with their own country where voting is concerned. Of course, we can build upwards on that: if we have a vibrant national democracy in Europe, we can co-operate on that solid foundation to tackle common problems.
	We on the Conservative Benches are the internationalists. We believe in countries, Governments and people getting together to tackle common scourges and the problems of the world, but the process must be built on a solid foundation: it must arise from below, whereas the EU method is top-down. The EU wants to be the dominant law-maker and we have to accept it. That has happened despite all the effort and money spent on trying to create a European political identity.
	The failure to do so is shown by the fact that the loss of democracy at national level, hollowed out by the relentless upward transfer of powers, is not being replaced by democracy at European Union level. The attitude of voters towards the European Parliament, which frequently boasts that it is the repository of the democratic impulse in Europe, shows that the reverse is happening. The Parliament has demanded and been given more powers in every treaty. It says, "Give us the powers and people will see that we are important. They'll come out to vote and we shall express the popular will of the peoples of Europe." It has not happened. In 1979, an average of 69 per cent. of the EU electorate voted in the first European election. In the next election, the figure dropped to 65 per cent. and thereafter to 64, 58 and 53 per cent. In the most recent European Parliament election, the percentage of the people of Europe who voted dropped to 48 per cent.
	The electorate either say no in referendums or "We couldn't care less" in elections. They certainly never regard themselves as democratically represented, in any real sense of the word, in the European Parliament. In the treaty, we are suppressing democracy at national level without replacing it at EU level. The democratic deficit, which is already yawning, is set to grow worse.
	The treaty does something else, and it does it specifically to the UK. It locks us into a continental system that is in defiance of our historical experience, outlook and pattern of trade. The UK is of course in part a European continental country; we are anchored offshore but we are geographically part of Europe. That is a magnetic force that operates on us, and much of our history has been bound up with what happened elsewhere in Europe, but we are more than that. We are what General de Gaulle called a maritime country. That other magnetic field operating on us is a result of our historical experience as part of the Commonwealth, part of the English-speaking world—sometimes called the Anglosphere—and part of areas of the world that are showing greater dynamism and higher economic growth.
	The treaty tries to switch off that maritime global magnetic field and suck us irreversibly into a continental destiny. That is doing grave damage not only to us but to people all over the world to whom we have responsibilities. Like many Members, I am interested in development policy, in helping the poorest people of the world through aid and trade, but the process is hindered, not helped, by the fact that we have no trade policy. There is much to do with aid in the treaty, which states that aid is to be made part of the foreign policy of the EU. However, the provision that until now explicitly required the EU to give most of its attention to the most deprived is removed from the treaty. Rather than gaining power to help the poorest in the world, we are losing it.
	African countries that want to trade with the UK have to go in supplication not to us, because we no longer have a trade Department, but to the European Union with its protectionist attitudes. It is a disgrace that the world's fifth biggest economy cannot set its own trade policy even when we want to help the poorest people in the poorest countries.
	As I have said, the treaty is not reforming; it is constitutional. Although it is complex, it can be reduced to a simple fact: it is about transferring powers from those whom people have elected and can get rid of, to those whom they have not elected and cannot get rid of. Our global role is our strength, but we are being forced to choose a low-growth continental system that is old-fashioned, centralised and regulatory.
	There is only one final conclusion: regardless of whether I am right or wrong, it must not be me, or the House, that makes the final decision, because ultimately it is not our powers that we are dealing with, but those of the people who sent us here. I am not one for regular or continuous referendums, as I believe in a representative democracy, but when the rules of the game are altered, and big decisions are made about who governs us and where we are governed from they must be made not by politicians but by the people. The rules are now altering. We are exporting powers of unprecedented scope on an unprecedented scale. That is why all of us must keep our promise to ask the people what they think in a national referendum.

Peter Lilley: For me, the key issue raised by the Bill is not Europe, but integrity. I took part in the debates because I was shocked at the suggestion that Members should betray the pledge and promise that they made to their electors in their manifesto, and I wanted to know what they had to hide. I moved from shock to concern, and then to anger and shame. I have never been so ashamed of this place as when I saw 300 Members of Parliament betray a pledge on which they were elected.
	The pledge for a referendum may have been unwise, unnecessary, or unmerited by the substance of the treaty. The proposed referendum may have been on the wrong question. However, the pledge was given, and I am old-fashioned enough to believe that when one makes a pledge, one should keep it. Comparisons between the Lisbon treaty on the one hand, and the treaties of Nice, Amsterdam and Maastricht and the Single European Act on the other, are irrelevant. The only comparison that matters is that between the European reform treaty before us and the constitutional treaty in respect of which the pledge for a referendum was given.
	The author of the constitution says that the constitutional treaty is substantially the same as the Lisbon treaty, but we are told that we must not believe him. The Chancellor of Germany, Mrs. Merkel, says:
	"The substance of the constitution is preserved. That is a fact."
	We are told that we must not believe her. The Prime Ministers of Spain, Belgium and Ireland say as much, but apparently they are lying, too. Ministers of Denmark, Italy and the Czech Republic have said the same, but Members on the Government Front Bench tell us that they are not to be believed. How the Government get on with their partners in Europe I do not know. Lithuania, Slovenia and other countries have said the same, too; all of them are apparently not to be trusted. We are to hand power to them, but we are not to believe them.
	I prefer to believe those who have no particular reason to lie than those who have every reason to mislead. Even the European Parliament passed a motion that
	"welcomes the fact that the mandate safeguards the substance of the Constitutional Treaty".
	The European Commission, which the right hon. Member for Leicester, West (Ms Hewitt) hopes to join—she gave us her job application earlier today—said that the treaty was essentially the same as the old constitution. I am not surprised that she is walking out of the Chamber. I understand that she intends to leave this place for another. No one has offered any coherent explanation why all the people, Heads of Government, and institutions that I have mentioned should want to deceive us, so we must assume that they are telling the truth.
	The British voters must put their faith in another place to force this House to think again. The Salisbury convention states that their lordships will not reject legislation implementing a clear manifesto commitment. By the same token, they surely must not accept legislation that fails to implement a clear manifesto pledge. I appeal to their lordships, not least those on the Cross Benches and the Bishops Benches, and to the people of great integrity on the Labour side and on the Lib Dem Benches to think whether it is not their duty to uphold the integrity of Parliament and give this House the chance to think again.
	Those in that House may think the pledge should never have been given. They may think it unnecessary or unwise. That is not the issue. It was given and it was in everybody's manifesto. Surely they should refer it back so that we can at last uphold the promises that we made.
	Referendums apart, is the treaty necessary or desirable? The Government say that it is essential for the smooth working of the EU. That is patently not true. The EU has worked smoothly since the accession four years ago. A study by Sciences Po in Paris show that the EU is adopting new rules and regulations 25 per cent. more quickly since enlargement than it was doing before. Rejection would simply leave us with the status quo, and the status quo shows every sign of working perfectly reasonably. Moreover, we would not have to concede further competences to the EU.
	The Government and their Lib Dem lackeys say that rejection would be tantamount to leaving the European Union. If we rejected the treaty, we would be throwing ourselves out. Again, that is patently not true. The French and the Dutch people rejected the constitution, which the Government and the Lib Dems pretend was far more substantial than the treaty, and no one suggested that they should leave the Union. It would simply result in another round of negotiation if our partners in Europe really wanted to push ahead with the treaty.
	We surely would also be able to obtain the concessions—the very substantial concessions, we are assured by the Government and the Lib Dems—that the French and the Dutch obtained as a result of their rejection of the original constitution Now Ministers and a number of hon. Members who have spoken in the debate allege that we on this side of the debate—not on this side of the House, because Members in all parts of the House argue the points that I am making—exaggerate the implications of the treaty and have exaggerated the implications of previous treaties. I wish that were so, but the reverse is true.
	We—including Governments of whom I have been a member—always underestimate the implications of treaties that we agree to, because we can never foresee how the European Court of Justice will interpret a treaty that we pass. All we know from experience is that it will always expand competences more widely than originally anticipated. My own experience confirms that. My first role in Government was as Economic Secretary, and the first thing I had to do was implement a decision of the European Court of Justice that we had to apply VAT to building, electricity, water, homes and spectacles. It was an interpretation of the sixth VAT directive, passed in all good faith by the Labour Government back in the 1970s, which none of us had foreseen would extend VAT into previously zero-rated areas.
	We assured everybody that the zero rates were safe and secure. It was the first time, as I remember telling the House with some relish, the House has ever been required to pass a tax and given no option not to do so since the ship tax introduced by Charles I sparked off the civil war. I am glad to say that the measure did not have the same impact when I introduced it, and I gave my officials instructions that they were to introduce it in such a way as to raise the minimum amount of revenue possible. It was the first time they had ever been told to introduce a tax with that effect.

Theresa Villiers: Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the main reasons why the treaty is such a significant shift in power is the criminal justice provisions? Criminal justice and the coercive power of Government over individual is one of the fundamental hallmarks of statehood, so transferring more power in that area to Brussels is a significant constitutional shift.

Peter Lilley: That is perfectly true. It is one of the areas, but by no means the only one, where we are making further shifts the full extent and implications of which we cannot fully judge at this stage but know from experience will be wider, not narrower, than any interpretation that we can put on them at present.
	How will all this affect the daily lives of our constituents and the ordinary business of their businesses? There will be ever more of the sort of thing that we already see as the result of existing transfers of competences. Some of that is necessary. I supported our entry into Europe and I still support our membership—I simply want reform, not exit. In that respect I seem to be rather different from several Members who opposed original entry because they thought that it went too far but now want to go infinitely further—a position that I find hard to understand.
	People already find it irritating how measure after measure is imposed on them and how they are told, if they ask, that it is because of the European Community. About 20 minutes before this debate, I asked the Library what measures had recently been passed in this House under European legislation. Since last October, there have been some 44 statutory instruments and three primary Acts of Parliament. They covered subjects such as energy and building performance certificates and inspections—the famous home information packs, which increase the cost of buying a house. The Government did not want that measure—it was imposed on us by a statutory instrument that this House had no opportunity to turn down because it came under the transfer of competences and European law. Other subjects include patents, compulsory licensing and supplementary protection certificates, movement restrictions, foot and mouth disease, reinsurance, and radioactive contaminated land in Northern Ireland. Why only Northern Ireland? I do not know. The list goes on, from animals and animal products, to health and social care profession regulations, to asylum procedures and regulations—an issue where we are going to increase the powers of the European Community. Not a single line, clause or amendment on the provisions involving asylum, border controls and immigration was debated in the House, yet the Government are asking us to accept them.
	Many measures are already being passed, but for some reason there is a conspiracy of silence when they do come through this House. Ministers pretend that what is happening is of their own volition when it is not. They act as ventriloquists' dummies for the legislation and the powers that they have transferred to other places. It is time that we revealed to our constituents what powers have already been transferred and why we do not want to transfer any more.
	The Foreign Secretary ridiculed the idea that the energy measures in the treaty have any substance, but they ensure that security of energy supply in the Union can be voted on by qualified majority voting. The Government say that the right of member states to determine the conditions for exploiting their energy resources requires unanimity. So it does, but that it is not the same as the allocation of oil and gas once it has been produced, which remains under qualified majority voting. In other words, if there is a worldwide shortage of oil and gas—as happened during the Suez crisis, the OPEC embargo, the Iranian crisis, and on several other occasions—we would be vulnerable to the European Community deciding that oil and gas should be shared fairly across the whole Community. My right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) said that the process would be reciprocal. Of course it would—we would share the oil and gas that we have with others and they would share the oil and gas that they do not have with us.

Peter Lilley: It does genetically, when one looks into the matter closely.
	The continentals often express themselves in antagonism to the Anglo-Saxon. I remember sitting in Council meetings in Europe and being told that we could not do such and such a thing because it was Anglo-Saxon. I had to say, "Is that sort of racialism allowed in Europe? Can you rule me and my policies out on racial grounds?" They more or less said, "Yes it is, and we can."
	There is a difference of attitude, not because what we do is better, but it is simply different. We have different institutions. When it came to negotiating the banking directive, we found that we had discount houses. No one else in Europe had them. The directive, as originally written, would have wiped out our whole system of monetary management and control. Fortunately, we managed to gain an exemption from it. When I became responsible for occupational pensions, I was told that they were not part of a European competence, but we found that they were under a great threat of implications because no other country except Holland had any system of occupational pensions. They fell foul of all sorts of European regulations.
	In lots of practical areas, we have developed different ways of doing things, and when we try to harmonise them across Europe, problems are created. I repeat: that is not because what we do is better—it is simply different. Therefore, it is natural that we should want to concede as few powers, and competences, as are necessary to have an open, single internal market and allow the maximum degree of constructive co-operation between our Governments. In my contention, this treaty goes far further than that. It concedes powers, and does so in such a way that we will not readily be able to get them back.
	Edmund Burke said:
	"Though a king can abdicate for his own person, he cannot abdicate for the monarchy."
	This place can transfer its powers perhaps for the duration for one Parliament, but it should be wary of trying to abdicate them permanently. It should certainly not do so without a referendum. That referendum was promised; unless and until it is provided, the treaty should not pass.

Mark Lazarowicz: The closing remarks of the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) illustrate the approach of many Conservatives. They suggest that the EU and its institutions are some sort of behemoth or monster over which we, as a member state, a Parliament and a country have no influence. The extreme example of that position is the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), who, in one of his speeches, described our relationship with the EU as colonial.
	The EU and its institutions do not impose things on us about which we have no say. We play an active role in the organisation. We send Ministers to European institutions and the European Council. We nominate members of the European Commission and our citizens can vote for Members of the European Parliament. Member states nominate judges of the European Court by common accord. It is not a foreign organisation but one in which we have the right to play an active part and over which we jointly have control as a member state.
	The treaty tries to strengthen the ability of the organisation and the institutions that we have jointly established to pursue more effectively the policies about which we can agree with our partners in Europe. It is in the national interest of all the nations and regions in the UK to make Europe work as effectively as possible. Although I do not have much faith that is what will happen after our discussions and after the House of Lords—hopefully—agrees to ratification, we should do our best to make the most of our EU membership and reject the semi-detached relationship with the EU that Tory Front Benchers appear to support when they do not go as far as succouring their hard-liners, who want to find some way in which to create a confrontation that takes us out of the European Union.
	Playing an active part in Europe does not mean that we should not stand up for our national interests. It does not mean that we should not challenge failings in the European Union or challenge it about revelations regarding the operation of the European Parliament and the expenses of Members of the European Parliament. It certainly does not mean that we should establish a European superstate—I do not support that and, to put it bluntly, it could never happen, given the 27 member states and many nations and cultures that make up the European Union.
	However, playing an active part means that our approach to our European partners and to discussing European issues should not always be couched in terms of confrontations with Europe, whereby success is measured by how much we have managed to extract from those cunning people across the channel. I hope that, when we have gone through the reform treaty process here and in the House of Lords, we will concentrate our efforts on making friends and building alliances in Europe. That is the way forward for promoting our national interests and guaranteeing the jobs and prosperity that depend on our links with Europe.
	The European Union is a success story. The fact that 27 members states, representing so many nations, cultures and languages, have built up the institution; that regional blocs across the world talk about emulating the European Union; that countries are clamouring to get into the European Union; and that, with one tiny exception, no country wants to leave—all that reflects the success of the European Union. I support the ratification of the treaty. From now on, I hope that we can concentrate more on promoting not only the success of Europe, but an active dialogue with our European partners and the building of alliances within Europe to promote the interests of the nations and regions of our country.

Mark Francois: I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but the moral of the story is, "Be very careful what you say on the 'Today' programme, in case it comes back to bite you."
	I would also like to pay tribute to a number of stalwarts on the Conservative Benches who have held the Government to account night after night. Of course I must mention my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), but I also include my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), my hon. Friends the Members for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison), for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) and for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper), and others who have been in the House so frequently to press the Government on what they are trying to do.
	I must also pay tribute to Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who has played such a frequent part in our proceedings that at one point I started to believe that he had been elected to the House. So that we do not leave him out of this Third Reading debate, I should like to remind the House of what he said so candidly in  Le Monde about the similarity between the original EU constitution and what is now the treaty of Lisbon. He predicted:
	"Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly".
	I am particularly indebted to the former President, as that is an excellent summary of the Government's whole strategy on this benighted Bill.
	In lieu of the referendum that they solemnly promised in their manifesto, the Government promised the House detailed line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill and the treaty—but having done that, they deliberately set out to make that practically impossible. To begin with, they briefed the media that there would be 20 days of debate in the Commons, then restricted the debate to 14 days instead. Although they like to compare that to the time allocated to debate the treaties of Amsterdam and Nice, they somehow always forget to mention that the Maastricht treaty was debated for 29 days in the House of Commons—more than double the time allocated to the debate on this treaty. And as my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), who has also spoken powerfully, pointed out again and again, at the time of Maastricht, the parliamentary day was often much longer than it is now.

Mark Francois: The Minister does not have to take my word for it; he can ask my hon. Friend the Member for Stone, who I am sure will remind him.
	Just in case the days that did remain might be used to their disadvantage, the Government then invented a new way to debate treaties of this nature, with special "themed" debates, designed to restrict the time available at the end of each day for detailed scrutiny of specific amendments. Owing to that methodology, clause 4 was debated for fewer than 15 minutes and clause 5 was never debated in detail at all. Similarly, more than half the groups of amendments selected for debate during the Committee stage—15 groups out of 29—were never even reached.
	I have here a leaked copy of the Government's briefing for tonight's debate. It states:
	"Tory claims that we have not allowed enough time for debate are wrong...315 amendments"
	were
	"tabled including 279 by the Opposition".
	Amendments may have been tabled, and some may have been selected—but they were not debated, because the debates were rigged to prevent that. The detailed amendments on borders, visas, asylum, migration, defence, the free movement of workers, freedom of association, personal data and social policy were never even debated at all. That is why Mr. Simon Carr of  The Independent, who has followed this issue closely, said of the whole process:
	"It's been a shabby affair. Low, dishonest and shabby."
	He then went on to argue—[Hon. Members: "Where is he?"] Simon Carr has been in the Press Gallery more often than some Members I see now in the Chamber. He added:
	"This treaty strategy is Gordon Brown's personal creation, this is his specified treatment of Parliament, and visible to all is his definition of politics as cynicism in action."
	Despite all the protestations about allowing ample time for debate and facilitating line-by-line scrutiny, when it actually came to it, the debate was deliberately rigged to make that almost impossible. The Government just could not abandon their control-freak tendencies and had to restrict debate on the treaty—an important point, which I sincerely hope will not be missed in the other place.
	Crucially, as the Bill goes forward to the other place, it still carries within it, in clause 6, provisions to implement article 48(6) of the treaty—the new "simplified revision procedure". That is the ratchet clause, which means that in future individual vetoes could be surrendered for ever, after only a brief debate on a simple Commons motion. On Second Reading, we said that we would table amendments during the Committee stage to strengthen parliamentary control over that procedure, so that giving up any veto could not be done through a simple motion, but only via a specific Act of Parliament.
	Although our amendment No. 20 to that effect was not successful, on the night it did enjoy support from Members of virtually all parties in the House, including Labour, the Scottish nationalists, Plaid Cymru, the Democratic Unionist party, ably represented tonight by the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson)—and even, on that occasion, the Liberal Democrats. I hope that the other place will consider the content of the amendment especially carefully. Perhaps it will be minded to implement the amendment, particularly given that it would not wreck the treaty itself, but would strengthen control over how the ratchet clause might be used in future.

William Cash: I congratulate my hon. Friend on his speech. May I also express the hope that maximum pressure will be exerted through the Whip in the other place in order to guarantee that we fight the battle in the House of Lords every bit as effectively as we have in the House of Commons, without coming to any shabby compromises?

Mark Francois: I thank my hon. Friend for his acknowledgement that our battle here has been effective. I think that the key question has to be what the Liberal Democrats will do in the upper House. We wait to find out the answer to that question.
	We also debated the referendum last Wednesday, and I do not propose, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to reprise the whole debate again. However, the Foreign Secretary's case against the referendum veered from one position to another with all the consistency of a series of Liberal Democrat "Focus" leaflets. He was finally reduced to arguing that a referendum was originally promised in order, as he put it that night, to "clear the air". Well, I put it to him that if it was appropriate to clear the air then, why can we not clear the air now, and give the people the referendum they were promised?
	That brings me on to a fundamental weakness in the Government's whole argument throughout the passage of the Bill. If they are so confident in the treaty and believe that it is such a good deal for the people of this country, and if they contend that it is so markedly to our advantage, why do not they not have the courage of their convictions and go the people of this country to argue the case in a referendum debate—not least because they promised it in the first place?
	As my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary previously indicated, we shall table a referendum amendment in the other place, where the battle to give the people the say that they were promised will continue—and continue vigorously. Even ardent pro-Europeans must realise that the way in which this whole process has been conducted has done little, if anything, to advance their cause. In fact, it has done quite the reverse. The public may not have followed all the intricacies of the debate, which is exactly what the Government hoped, but they do know that they were promised a referendum, which they have so far been denied.
	There was considerable press comment in the aftermath of last week's vote, but I was particularly struck by an article by Camilla Cavendish in  The Times on 7 March. It was entitled "A squalid exercise in dishonesty", and she noted:
	"The powers that our politicians are giving away are powers that they hold in trust for the people. Some of those who voted on Wednesday sincerely believe the EU and were voting on principle. But many more simply found it expedient not to know too much."
	She went on to argue:
	"Historians may relish the irony that so much now rests with Irish voters in their referendum and with unelected Lords. Let us hope that the Lords debate is more honest."
	From the Conservative Benches, we certainly hope so, too.
	If the House grants the Bill a Third Reading tonight, it will fall to the other place to apply what my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) has previously described as the "Salisbury convention in reverse". It will fall to the unelected peers to hold elected Commons Members to the promise on which they were elected to Parliament in the first place!
	I have sat through every single debate on this treaty, and I have contributed to just about every one of them. Having done so, and seen this process in action, I believe that the only type of victory that the Government can hope to win tonight is a pyrrhic one. I believe that this remains a treaty without a democratic mandate; it lacks public support, and it lacks any endorsement by the people. When people were given a chance to vote in 10 constituency referendums, 88 per cent. argued for a referendum on the constitution. There is now only one way for the Government to legitimise this treaty in the eyes of the people—finally to have the courage of their convictions, to abide by their own manifesto, and to let the people decide.

Jim Murphy: We have had a fascinating debate, not least because of the contributions made by my hon. Friends the Members for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) and for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty), my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, West (Ms Hewitt) and my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz).
	I have to say that I have been looking forward to this evening since the afternoon that I became Minister for Europe. As I left No. 10, the Prime Minister said to me, "As Minister for Europe, you will have some legislation to take through Parliament." Little did I know what he had in mind for me.
	We have enjoyed the contributions from and the detail provided by the hon. Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois). We have disagreed in almost every debate throughout our proceedings, but we have done so—I hope he does not mind my saying this—in a comradely fashion. The hon. Gentleman introduced Bob Crow to our proceedings on Second Reading, so a comradely fashion it is.
	We have also enjoyed the contributions from the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), the shadow Foreign Secretary. I have said before that he is the best after-dinner speaker in Parliament. After listening to him, I have come to the forlorn conclusion half a dozen times during this process that I will have to get an invitation to one of his after-dinner speeches to hear the detail of his policies.
	I would also like to thank my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary for his leadership and the way that he has led the debate on each big parliamentary occasion. We have also heard forensic contributions from my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, West, who—apart from me and the hon. Member for Rayleigh—are about the only constant attendees of our proceedings.
	We have had the opportunity to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes), who chairs the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, and my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk, who chairs the Select Committee on European Scrutiny. Typically, both are in their places tonight. I have also had support from an excellent team—Parliamentary Private Secretaries, Whips and the Bill team.
	We have heard a variety of contributions today. I have to admit that, for the first time, I was not in my place to hear the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash).

Rob Marris: I have twice asked the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) what the Conservative party's plan would be if the Bill were lost tonight. What is their plan B for what the United Kingdom should do if the treaty of Lisbon is lost tonight? Does my hon. Friend know what their position is?

Jim Murphy: At the minimum, their approach would thrust the European Union back into a period of introspection that would jeopardise stability and jobs across the European Union. Never mind plan B; we are not even clear about what the Conservatives' plan A is.

Jim Murphy: A month of preparation, a month in gestation, a month of research, and that is all that the hon. Gentleman could come up with. The fact is that the great democracies of Germany and its centre-right Government are endorsing the treaty, the French Parliament has already ratified it, and the new Spanish Government are committed to it.
	What would this great "not letting the matter rest" coalition look like? It has a new member: I discovered only yesterday, when I was in Brussels, that the French hunting party has now come out against the treaty. Given Sinn Fein, Marianne Thieme—who, as we all know, leads the Dutch party for the animals in its opposition to the treaty—and the now infamous Philippe de Villiers, part of the leadership of the French hunting party, we have three allies to fill this great chamber of Europe. That still leaves 23 empty seats for the great European coalition of international Governments.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith , pursuant to Standing Order No. 41A(3) (Deferred divisions),
	That at this day's sitting, Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply to the Motion in the name of Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer relating to Banks and Banking.— [Alison Seabeck.]
	  Question agreed to.

Phil Wilson: I am extremely pleased to be given the opportunity to take part in this short debate about an important issue that affects my constituency.
	For many years the regeneration of Newton Aycliffe town centre has been an unresolved issue for my constituents who live in the town. Since I was elected MP for Sedgefield in July 2007, making progress on the regeneration of the town centre has been my main focus of attention in Newton Aycliffe. Tonight, I shall report on the progress that has been made.
	The whole debacle of the regeneration of Newton Aycliffe town centre stretches back not just two or three years but more than four decades. The people of Newton Aycliffe have been living with the problem for a generation, but what I shall announce this evening can, I believe, start to breathe new life into the future of the town centre. Before I outline the history of the problems with the regeneration, I shall state where we are at present and why there is room for optimism.
	Over the past eight months, I have been working to resolve the ongoing problems with the regeneration project with Sedgefield borough council, Freshwater, which owns the town centre—we must not forget that it is privately owned—Durham county council, the County Durham primary care trust, the Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys mental health trust and Great Aycliffe town council. My predecessor, the right hon. Tony Blair, arranged for the involvement of those partner organisations in the project. They all sat down together at the beginning of last year and now hold meetings on a regular basis.
	Over the past few years, the main sticking point has been the former health centre, whose dilapidated state is a disgrace to the NHS and an embarrassment to Newton Aycliffe. By the end of 2007, after much delay, the County Durham PCT moved its staff out of the health centre. Most are based at the primary care partnership at Cobbler's Hall in Newton Aycliffe, where they will continue to deliver clinical services on a temporary basis until the town centre is redeveloped. The mental health trust, which provides the substance misuse service, is seeking planning permission for change of use of a property in Newton Aycliffe and will be leaving the former health centre shortly.
	The health centre shared its building with the library. Durham county council has found a site to which the library can move on a temporary basis. It will be sited in a demountable building on land formerly occupied by a petrol station, once the site has been cleared. The site is opposite the police headquarters so the library will remain in the centre of the town.
	Next to the library is another dilapidated building, where Age Concern runs a drop-in centre for elderly people, known locally as the Cubby. The proposal is that space be made available in the library to accommodate the elderly people who use the Cubby. Once that has been achieved—over the next few months—it will be time to demolish the building that houses the former health centre and library.
	Last week, I received written confirmation from the County Durham PCT that demolition will happen once the final moves have taken place. Freshwater has confirmed to me that Dalton way, a mothballed row of shops next to the former health centre, will also be demolished. That is excellent news and is the start of the town centre's regeneration. However, regeneration is not just about moving services into temporary accommodation; it is also about finding a permanent home for them. That is why it is planned to turn the leisure centre into a community service hub where the health centre and library will also be permanently based. The relevant partners in that aspect of the development will meet later this week to start threshing out the details. In May, public consultation will take place, led by Freshwater, which will detail its plans for the town centre development and listen to people's views. All that is good news for the people of Newton Aycliffe but I understand their frustration, because I share it. My office is situated in the town centre, at 5 Upper Beveridge way.
	It is important to outline briefly the history of Newton Aycliffe to show how we arrived at a situation in which we are faced with a town centre in need of regeneration. As a result of the New Towns Act 1946, the Newton Aycliffe (Designation) Order was made on 19 April 1947 and Newton Aycliffe became one of the first wave of six new towns designated that year. The others were Stevenage, Crawley, Hemel Hempstead, Harlow and East Kirkbride. However, the birth of Newton Aycliffe is locally considered to be 28 June 1948, when Lord Beveridge cut the first sward. On 9 November, he opened the first new house. This year—2008—is therefore a special year for Newton Aycliffe; it is the town's 60th anniversary.
	In the 1940s, only 60 people lived in the area that was to become Newton Aycliffe. With the advent of the second world war, the Aycliffe area was designated the perfect location for a royal ordnance factory because it was away from existing communities. At its peak, some 16,000 people, mostly women, worked in the factory. One of them was my grandmother. They worked in 1,000 flat-topped concrete and brick buildings spread over 1 square mile. The site was suitable partly because it was close to the Great North road, now the A1(M), and had a small railway station—the same station at which Robert Stephenson conducted his first train run, with locomotion No. 1, in 1825.
	After the war, the ordnance factory was run down and some of the buildings were sold off to private companies. That become the nucleus of Newton Aycliffe's industrial estate, which is now the largest industrial estate in County Durham, with more than 250 companies employing between 8,000 and 9,000 people. It was inevitable that a growing industrial estate miles from anywhere would lead to the building of an urban area, and eventually a new town was proposed, with a corporation to oversee its development. The first chair of the corporation was Lord Beveridge. A friend of mine, John Moran, who has lived in Newton Aycliffe for almost 50 years, is a bricklayer and helped to build more houses in the town in those early days. He remembers Lord Beveridge visiting the building site on Crosby road one day, wearing his trilby, overcoat and that traditional building-site apparel, a pair of spats.
	Newton Aycliffe was the smallest of the new towns. It was planned to cover an area of 880 acres and cater for a population of 10,000 people, 6,000 of whom would work on the industrial estate. In his 1952 pamphlet "New Towns and the Case for Them", Beveridge described the first inhabitants of Newton Aycliffe. He said that the town consisted
	"largely of young married people....As a consequence the town overflows with young children, it is a town of toddlers, or those just past the toddling age; it is a town of few adolescents and up to present, only three grandmothers in its 1,000 of population."
	Of the town's first 500 inhabitants, many came from all over County Durham, including such areas in my constituency as Ferryhill and Chilton. Many more travelled from Birmingham, London, Oxford, Coventry, Somerset, Scotland and elsewhere.
	The town grew steadily, but had no amenities. Every school, church, community centre and doctor's surgery had to be built from scratch. The first row of shops opened on Neville parade in 1952, and boasted a post office, a greengrocer's, and a fishmonger's. The first shops in the town centre started to be built in 1957, when the population target for Newton Aycliffe was doubled from 10,000 to 20,000, so that it could reach its industrial potential. By 1959 there were 49 shops in the town centre, of which 39 were let.
	At the time, a road ran through the town centre along Beveridge way, but it has been pedestrianised. Many constituents remember the town centre from those times; they say that it was vibrant and full of flowerbeds, and that it was somewhere that people wanted to go. From my understanding, the problems with the development of the town centre started in the early 1960s, when Lord Hailsham, as Minister for the North East, produced a report entitled "The North East—A Programme for Regional Development and Growth", which proposed additional industrial land for Newton Aycliffe and a new target population of 45,000. Even then the figure was seen as highly optimistic, but the corporation started to consider the future of the town centre in the light of the new target.
	The development corporation's annual report of 1963 records that
	"because of the possibility of the town being doubled in size there has been no further development in the town centre, apart from the completion of a large supermarket".
	There were further delays while consultants prepared a master plan. A report was commissioned in 1964 but did not materialise until 1966. The plan was to build a new town centre a quarter of a mile away, and to connect the two by a pedestrian walkway. That proposal was rejected and it was agreed to expand the existing town centre.
	In 1968, the Secretary of State agreed to phase 1 of the town centre's development, which provided 14 new shop units and a modest amount of second-floor office accommodation. In 1970, Darlington rural district council built the leisure centre that now stands on the corner of Beveridge way, with a £100,000 contribution from the development corporation. The centre was further extended by Sedgefield district council, the successor local authority, in 1974. In 1972, phase 2 was agreed and led to more shopping and office space.
	Between the publication of the Hailsham report and the completion of phase 2 in 1975—a period of 12 years—the town centre changed, some thought, architecturally, for the worse. In his book "Aycliffe and Peterlee New Towns", Garry Philipson said that much of the problem could be attributed to
	"indecision and consequent lengthy delay regarding the new towns' target population and, subsequently, the form of town centre redevelopment."
	By 1980 Newton Aycliffe's population stood at 26,000. A fresh target was set the following year which envisaged a population of 32,000 in 1991, a figure dramatically lower than the 45,000 set by Hailsham. The population in 2008 is only about 27,000. In 1984 the town centre was sold off to the Grainger Trust, which in 1990 sold it to Freshwater property investors. The following year the Avenue comprehensive school was closed because of falling school rolls. The school was next door to the town centre and was demolished in the early 1990s.
	It was not until 1999 that the county council agreed to sell the land to Manchester-based developers CTP. In 2000, CTP and Tesco announced a plan for a 68,000 sq ft supermarket as part of a £25 million town centre makeover. The owners of the existing town centre opposed the proposal on the grounds that the Tesco store would be too large, and integration between the new development and the existing town centre would be poor. As a consequence, there was no agreement.
	The borough council agreed to go ahead with the development in two phases. Phase 1 consisted of the new Tesco store, eight retail units and a youth centre. The development was completed by 2004. Phase 2 was to include a pedestrian plaza, health centre and library and community facilities. In 2006, Somerfield supermarket closed with the loss of 63 jobs in the town centre, mostly as the result of competition from Tesco.
	The agreement between Durham county council and CPT expired before the development of the second phase could start. The council stated at the time, in May 2007, that despite
	"assurance after assurance . . .the development never came".
	That was the view of Chris Tunstall, deputy chief executive of the council.
	That is how we reached the present position, but as I said, there are grounds for optimism because things are starting to move after much pressure and after getting people to sit down and sort the problem out. Some may say that we have been here before, and we have. That is why I will continue to press hard for action rather than talk. Action is starting to happen, but my anger will match that of my constituents if the promised action is not forthcoming.
	Slowly, retailers are beginning to show confidence in the town once more. A new store will be moving into the town centre in the coming months where Somerfield once had a supermarket. That may be of little comfort for my constituents in Newton Aycliffe, but criticism of town centres in new towns is not restricted to the town centre that we are debating tonight. It has been a concern for many new towns. The Transport, Local Government and the Regions Committee report "The New Towns: Their Problems and Future", published in July 2002, stated in paragraph 18:
	"At the centre of New Towns, a shopping centre has been developed to meet the needs of the surrounding populations. Many have suffered from poor design and layout. Most are now out-of-date and as a result, residents are choosing to shop in other locations."
	In paragraph 21, the report went on to say:
	"Many of the local authorities are seeking to redevelop the shopping centres but they are hindered because they do not own them."
	That is true of Newton Aycliffe town centre. Freshwater, which owns the site, however, is showing renewed commitment to the town centre's redevelopment.
	In the book on Newton Aycliffe and Peterlee by Garry Philipson from which I quoted earlier, the author pointed out the fundamental problem with the development of town centre shopping. Referring to both Newton Aycliffe and Peterlee, he saw
	"the reluctance of developers to invest in two small New Towns with limited prospects of growth, both sited in an impoverished region."
	He wrote that in 1988.
	That was then; this is now. Today, the north-east is growing at a faster rate than any other region in the country. Unemployment in my constituency is at or below the national average. Back in the 1980s, it stood at 40 per cent. in some areas of my constituency. Employment is at high levels. I read in the papers yesterday that the north-east is exporting more than it is importing, part of which, no doubt, is down to the businesses on Newton Aycliffe's industrial estate.
	It is time for developers and everyone else who has the regeneration of Newton Aycliffe town centre at heart to step up to the plate and deliver. The people of Newton Aycliffe have waited long enough. Newton Aycliffe is a dynamic town, with a strong community spirit, and in 2008, the year of the town's 60th anniversary, my constituents there can look forward with confidence. All they want is a town centre that they can proudly say is at the heart of their community.
	I conclude by asking the Government to consider two proposals. First, will my hon. Friend the Minister ensure that the Government's regeneration agencies work with the local authorities responsible for Newton Aycliffe to ensure that the town delivers its full potential as a sustainable community and strategic growth point for County Durham? As we approach the creation of a new unitary authority for County Durham, does he agree that that new authority has an important strategic role in delivering for the people of Newton Aycliffe?
	Secondly, the Government are developing a radical policy on the creation of eco-towns—there are to be 10 by 2020. That is an excellent approach to marrying together sustainable communities and the need to tackle climate change. However, as they will be new towns, I strongly believe that the lessons of the existing new towns should be taken into consideration as plans progress. They need to be places where people can live, work and, dare I say, shop in harmony. Can the Minister tell me if the lessons, both positive and negative, from the past 60 years of new town development will be fed into the decision-making process on eco-towns?
	Newton Aycliffe is a great town and one that I am personally very proud to represent.

Iain Wright: It gives me real pleasure to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson), who is my next door neighbour in Parliamentary constituency terms, on securing this debate. He has been in this House for only a relatively short time but he has impressed all sides with his tenacious campaigning on behalf of his constituents in Sedgefield and his knowledge of and passion for raising the skills levels of people both in his constituency and in our wider north-east region.
	I am aware that revitalising and regenerating Newton Aycliffe's town centre was a hot topic in the by-election that enabled my hon. Friend to come to this House. True to his word, he has been resolute in his promise to his constituents to raise this matter in the House. I was particularly impressed with the fact that he has also kept his constituents closely informed about this matter. I understand that he wrote to more than 1,000 people who have expressed an interest in the subject of Newton Aycliffe town centre, informing them that he had had meetings with the private owners of the centre, parish, borough and county councils, and the primary care trust. He is a strong campaigner on this matter. He demonstrated that in his maiden speech, and he did so, in an excellent fashion, here again tonight.
	The Government strongly believe that facilitating and enabling town centres and other service centres within regeneration areas to achieve their potential is an important part of maximising economic growth and realising the sense of place and high quality of life that we all wish to obtain. The Government's policies and approach towards town and city centre development have underpinned successful regeneration across the country, and we now need to reflect on how we can build on that success and drive improvement and investment forward to improve still further areas like Newton Aycliffe.
	Government policy acknowledges that places are different. For example, Newton Aycliffe is different from Sedgefield village or Trimdon colliery—other parts of my hon. Friend's constituency—and will have distinctive strengths that require nurturing and challenges that need to be addressed. That can be done only with a wider, deeper and more meaningful involvement with the local communities affected. Councils can take on the role of strong and strategic local leadership, with central Government encouraging local priorities and innovation. What is also vital to appreciate, particularly when, as in my hon. Friend's case, the town centre is privately owned, is that partnership working and good, strong and mature co-ordination between private, public and community organisations, tailored to the specific area, is the best way to succeed.
	My hon. Friend asked me how we could ensure that the regeneration activities work with the local authorities responsible for Newton Aycliffe to ensure that the town delivers its full potential. I absolutely agree with the concerns he expressed. He will no doubt be aware of the sub-national review, in which we propose that the regional strategy for planning—the regional spatial strategy—and the strategy for economic development—the regional economic strategy—form into a single integrated strategy. We are proposing more delegation of funding for One NorthEast as the regional development agency in our region and a new economic development duty for local authorities. That renewed clarity of roles for RDAs and local authorities will address the concerns raised by my hon. Friend. On the sub-national review, he will wish to note that we are preparing consultations on those reforms, which we will publish shortly.
	I also agree with my hon. Friend's point about how the creation of a new unitary authority for County Durham has an important role in delivering for the people of Newton Aycliffe. Incidentally, I thought that he was excellent on this subject on the BBC's "Politics Show" on Sunday. I would suggest that the partnership approach that I mentioned earlier will need to be established quickly with the new unitary authority to ensure that the council addresses the needs and aspirations of the people of Newton Aycliffe.
	I understand that sometimes the processes of land assembly, property purchase, negotiation with landlords and tenants and, importantly, consultation with local people and agencies take time and I know that the communities in Newton Aycliffe and the wider borough of Sedgefield have sometimes expressed their impatience with that process. However, it is to the credit of all concerned, particularly my hon. Friend, who has done much to engage with local people on this matter and broker a deal with the relevant players, that the people, businesses and public agencies in the town can look forward to a revitalised town centre built on partnership and long-term sustainability.
	As my hon. Friend said, Newton Aycliffe town centre is in the process of a major redevelopment around the old Avenue school site. That redevelopment has seen the creation of a new library, community centre, supermarket and a wider range of leisure and retail units, adding something like another 16 acres of commercial and recreational opportunities for the people of Newton Aycliffe. I am aware that this new redevelopment will be based around a new town square, which will be the central point between the old and the new town centres. The sense of place that I mentioned earlier is so important. I strongly believe, as does my hon. Friend, that the public realm is vital in creating that positive sense of place, and that the development of well-planned areas with high quality design and construction attracts people to live, work and relax in them.
	What my hon. Friend has described tonight is an emerging success story, with private developers and public agencies locked into an agreement to transform the main area of the town centre. I understand that there are still some property moves and demolitions to be undertaken, but we, and the people of Newton Aycliffe, can look forward with renewed confidence to the return of the busy and bustling town centre that the town deserves to have. That is particularly good news for the town and excellent timing, because it will help us to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the town.
	The Government are keen to see a co-ordinated and holistic approach to regeneration, with an emphasis on ensuring that our towns and neighbourhoods are connected and have the right mix of economic activity to provide for more and better jobs, decent standards, a choice of decent housing and excellent public services close to the community. My hon. Friend has already raised with our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health the matter of the £250 million access fund, which will establish 150 new GP-run health centres and improve access to first-class health facilities in areas such as County Durham. My hon. Friend promised his constituents that he will continue to bang on about matters relating to the health centre in the town and, thanks to his efforts, work is progressing.
	Housing is something that greatly interests me and I know that Newton Aycliffe, like my own constituency, and the rest of the Sedgefield constituency, has seen significant development and improvement in its housing stock over the past 10 years. In addition, the nearby industrial estate continues to be a major source of investment and employment. The industrial estate is the largest business location in County Durham, covering some 230 hectares and is located close to major road links in the north-east such as the A1(M). I am confident that the industrial estate will provide still more enterprise and employment opportunities to County Durham and Newton Aycliffe in the years to come, following further investment.
	One of the big successes of this Labour Government has been the neighbourhood renewal fund, which was charged with reducing the inequalities in our most deprived areas. That was done through the national strategy action plan, "A New Commitment to Neighbourhood Renewal", which set out the radical vision that within 20 years no one should be seriously disadvantaged by where they live. As a result of that commitment, the north-east region has received more than £377 million of neighbourhood renewal funding since 2001.
	Town centres such as Newton Aycliffe have benefited from elements of that investment, and Sedgefield borough council and its partners have received more than £7 million as part of neighbourhood renewal fund moneys.
	Although, as my hon. Friend said, unemployment levels in Newton Aycliffe, the wider Sedgefield constituency and the north-east are at record lows, more needs to be done. That is why we recently announced the new working neighbourhoods fund to drive down unemployment still further in our disadvantaged communities and help councils and community groups optimise the talent and enterprise in our neighbourhoods.
	Sedgefield borough council's annual allocation for the working neighbourhoods fund has been set at £2 million—substantially more, it has to be said, than it received from the neighbourhood renewal fund. That funding will provide a further boost to the regeneration efforts of the area and should directly link into the capital investment and other investments planned for Newton Aycliffe town centre.
	An improved, more economically active town centre in Newton Aycliffe, close to a revitalised Aycliffe industrial estate, promises investment, jobs, and better opportunities for communities. I know that local partners want to factor in a vibrant town centre in their broader strategies for renewal.
	I do not want to dictate the way in which local councils and community groups should allocate that additional funding, but they could, for example, set up job advice and skills schemes in the town centre and in the community buildings that are being built. Financial incentives will be available to local authorities that are successful in reducing worklessness. I hope that such a co-ordinated approach will help ensure that Newton Aycliffe town centre has a vibrant future.
	My hon. Friend mentioned his belief that town centres do not exist in isolation, and that their connection to local jobs and housing markets is crucial to their sustainability. He also mentioned his hope that we will address and learn from the lessons of the past about the new growth points and eco-towns.
	Growth points are key to concentrating future growth in existing urban centres. They can also act as a successful catalyst for improving areas and town centres. With that in mind, my hon. Friend may be interested to know that the Durham housing and neighbourhoods board has submitted to the Government a bid for a new growth point in the south and east Durham areas. Newton Aycliffe is included in that bid as a key urban centre and focus for significant housing and economic development. I would like to tell my hon. Friend that we will make an announcement on the growth point bids that have been selected for development shortly, and I am sure that he will take a keen interest in that.
	Again, I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. I pay tribute to the work that he has done in brokering an acceptable deal for the regeneration of the area, and assure him that the Government will continue to invest in areas that require assistance in regenerating and revitalising communities such as those that he represents in Newton Aycliffe.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes to Eleven o'clock.